This story comes from Philadelphia:

All Ciavarella juvie convictions vacated

County judicial scandal ruling on about 6,500 cases is a victory for advocacy group Juvenile Law Center of Philadelphia

Seeking to remedy what it deemed a “travesty of justice,” the state Supreme Court on Thursday vacated the convictions of all juveniles who appeared before former Judge Mark Ciavarella from 2003 to 2008 and barred retrials in all but a small portion of those cases. […]

The high court based its ruling on Ciavarella’s admission that he accepted millions of dollars from the owner and builder of two juvenile detention centers to which he sentenced youths [emphasis mine], as well as his “systematic” deprivation of the constitutional rights of juveniles who appeared before him. […]

The District Attorney’s Office has come under fire for its failure to alert authorities to abuses of juveniles’ rights that were perpetrated under Ciavarella.

Some notes:

• What relations are judges allowed to have with detention centres? Is there legislature anywhere that makes explicit what judges may or may not accept from the owners, managers, etc of prisons? Was the issue here that Ciavarella accepted a hellish amount of money from the prison management, or that he accepted any at all? In other words, had he received a “reasonable” amount of money openly and transparently, would he have been alright?
• There’s no mention of what the judges’ punishments were, which suggests (that the paper thinks) that people are or should be satisfied with the overturning of the convictions. But that ignores the fact that these men negatively impacted the lives of at least 6,500 adolescents. At the very least, will these two be allowed to serve in court again? Will they serve any jail time?
• I wonder what remedies and health services will be offered to the people who were convicted under these men.
• I should look up Canadian judicial regulatory bodies. Suggestions?