Victims ‘shocked’ after Biden pardons ‘kids-for-money’ judge and embezzles $54 million

Washington
CNN
—

Victims of major public corruption cases in Pennsylvania and Illinois are angry that President Joe Biden this week granted clemency to two convicted officials.

The commutations were announced Thursday as part of a historic clemency package for 1,500 convicted felons who, the White House said, “deserve a second chance.”

The two convicted officials whose cases sparked outrage — a crooked Pennsylvania judge and a notorious Illinois fraudster — had both already been released from prison early and placed under house arrest during the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden’s actions now end that sentence.

The president has already faced bipartisan criticism over his highly controversial pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted of 12 tax and gun crimes earlier this year.

A Biden administration official told CNN that the recent commutes were not individual decisions and instead were a uniform decision given to people who met certain criteria, such as having a track record of good behavior while was under house arrest.

Former Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan was convicted in 2011 in what was infamously called “kids for cash” scandalwhere he took kickbacks from for-profit detention centers in exchange for wrongfully sending juveniles to their facilities. The case was widely considered to be one of the worst judicial scandals in Pennsylvania history.

Like all the other nearly 1,500 people who got rides from Biden this week, Conahan was released from jail because of Covid. His house arrest was to end in 2026.

Conahans and another judge in Luzerne County’s misdemeanor led the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to throw out 4,000 juvenile convictions, and the discredited state judges were ordered to pay $200 million to victims, according to Associated Press.

Sandy Fonzo – mother of Edward Kenzakoski, who died by suicide after serving time behind bars as part of the kickback scheme – said she was “shocked… and hurt” after learning of Biden’s decision to commute the remainder of Conahan’s sentence.

“Conahan’s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son’s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power,” Fonzo told Citizens’ Voice, a local outlet. “This pardon feels like an injustice to all of us who are still suffering. Right now I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain this has brought back.”

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, also said Friday at an unrelated news conference in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, that “I feel strongly that President Biden got it completely wrong and caused a lot of pain here in Northeastern Pennsylvania.”

There was similar fallout in Illinois after Biden pardoned Rita Crundwellthe former comptroller of Dixon, a town of about 15,000 in the northern part of the state.

She pleaded guilty in 2012 to embezzling $54 million in what was considered the largest municipal fraud in American history. She was convicted to nearly 20 years in prison, nearly the maximum, though she moved to house arrest during the pandemic.

According to the Bureau of Prisons, she was to be under house arrest until 2028.

“When I heard the news, I was completely shocked in disbelief, I was outraged and felt a complete sense of betrayal by the federal justice system, the White House and the president,” Dixon City Manager Danny Langloss told CNN in an interview Friday. .

Langloss, who said he is not affiliated with a political party, was police chief when Crundwell’s fraud was uncovered. He said he believes “justice was not served here.”

“I don’t like the idea … that with several more years of her sentence to go, she’s going to walk free in the community she betrayed and stole from,” Langloss said.

Fallout from the pandemic

Margaret Love, who served in the Justice Department as the U.S. pardons attorney from 1990 to 1997, said the fallout from Biden’s latest commute was a consequence of how the prison population was reduced during Covid – during the Trump administration.

Congress passed the bipartisan CARES Act in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, which, among other things, paved the way for the federal government to move around 12,000 inmates from federal prisons to home detention. Many of these people have since completed their sentences, although many are still under house arrest.

“A lot of people who were sent home were convicted of white-collar or non-violent offenses and were considered safe bets to behave in society,” Love said, adding that she believed the decision-making was tainted by racial discrimination.

With grumbling among some Republicans about sending those convicts back to prison, Love said Biden “simply purged this population” and took that option off the table.

And to those upset that Biden let these criminals out of house arrest early, “you should have complained four years ago when they were released from prison,” Love said.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.