Luzerne County 'cash for kids' defendants finding wheels of justice spin slowly

PITTSTON, Pa. - As Jesse Miers remembers it, the judge took barely a minute to convict him of possessing a stolen pistol.

Then Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. declared, "Remanded until further notice." And Miers, 17 and without benefit of a lawyer, was shackled, chained, and sent off to a privately owned detention center - a jail whose owner, federal prosecutors say, was giving kickbacks to the judge in return for a steady supply of prisoners.

So Miers, now 20, was relieved last year when he heard that his record would be cleared, along with those of about 4,500 other juvenile defendants trapped in Luzerne County's "cash for kids" scandal.

But while the wheels of justice spun swiftly in finding Miers guilty, they are stuck in a slow grind when it comes to finding him relief.

More than a year after state courts first ordered Ciavarella's verdicts thrown out, fewer than 10 percent of the records have been expunged. Luzerne County is hiring staff to finish the job. But even then, thanks to the mounds of paperwork and multiple agencies involved, officials say it will take another year to erase all the records.

That leaves young people who are trying to enlist in the military, obtain student loans, win teacher certification, or apply for certain jobs entangled in red tape.

Some are still too young to job-hunt - 46 defendants were younger than 13 when Ciavarella jailed them, records show. The youngest was 10.

Miers, who took out a $3,000 loan to help pay his court costs, has earned a GED and a commercial driver's license. But he can't find work - not with the gun charge.

"It's kind of hard to get a job when you have something like that on your record," he said in an interview at his fiancée's home in Pittston. "I've tried to move on as much as I possibly could, but it won't happen until my record is expunged and it's out of my life for good."

Despite enormous attention and resources committed to cleaning up the Luzerne scandal - an intense federal investigation that has so far yielded criminal charges against two dozen people, at least four civil suits representing about 500 named plaintiffs, a state commission devoted to reform, and enough legal work to employ a city of lawyers - the young people are still being punished by the past.