District Judge Bruno’s pay reinstated amidst ticket-fixing probe

• By MICHAEL P. RELLAHAN
  mrellahan@dailylocal.com
• Posted: Thursday, 05/30/13 02:03 pm

• 
  

  
  

• 

• CONTRIBUTE
• • Story Ideas
  • Send Corrections

Magisterial District Judge Mark A. Bruno won a decision in court to have his judicial pay reinstated while he awaits trial in federal court on charges that he illegally helped fix a traffic ticket in Philadelphia.

The state’s Court of Judicial Discipline on May 24 ruled that the state Supreme Court had not properly looked at the full circumstances surrounding the government’s case against Bruno when it ordered his pay suspended following his indictment in January.

“The conduct with which Judge Bruno is charged does not approximate the conduct of other cases of judicial misconduct in which the defendants’ pay was properly withheld,” the court ruled, “for in no way is it imbued with the gravity and the overt disdain for the law on display in those cases.”

Vincent DiFabio, one of Bruno’s defense attorneys, said Thursday that the judge’s pay would be restored retroactively from the tie the state Supreme Court suspended him in February. DiFabio said he and his client were in the process of going through tens of thousands of pages of discovery provided by the US. Attorney’s Office in the matter in preparation for trial, possibly in November.

RELATED ASSETS

Sam Stretton, the West Chester attorney who represented Bruno before the disciplinary court, could not be reached for comment.

The state’s Judicial Conduct Board had petitioned the court in March to have Bruno suspended without pay, after the state SupremeCourt had done so in February. Although DiFabio and Stretton did not argue that he could not be suspended pending the outcome of the case in U.S. District Court against him, they said that the board had failed to properly establish that his pay be halted.