Philadelphia Takes a Fall

By Ezra Bowen

It has happened before in big-time sport: a team goes into a rough schedule only to learn that a clutch of key players has been suspended for allegedly taking bribes. But rarely has any ball club been hit as hard as Philadelphia's judicial team was this month. Faced by a truly daunting schedule of cases, it saw 15 of its 105 judges temporarily cleaned off the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as a result of a federal probe into cash gifts by a local union. The cut may represent the largest number of trial-court judges ever suspended at one time.

These tidings came amid the worst possible circumstances. Since the Philadelphia judiciary already had ten vacancies, the suspensions leave the city with nearly a quarter of its bench empty. Even before the suspensions, ( the case backlog in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas had soared from 6,000 to 9,000 in three months. Since new judicial appointments could be delayed by interparty squabbling in the state senate, the situation may get worse before it gets better.

To bottom off Philadelphia's woes, just two months ago, in a separate action, a federal consent decree mandated a reduction in the city's prison population from 4,200 to 3,750, leaving the system with fewer places to put prisoners, even if they could be brought to trial. "They're playing political games, and meanwhile we're trying to get space in prison," complains Philadelphia District Attorney Ronald Castille.

The judicial scandal began to unreel some 17 months ago when federal agents planted microphones in the offices of Roofers Union Local 30-30b. The purpose: to pick up possible crime leads, including potentially incriminating conversations between judges and union officers suspected of seeking a little too much brotherly love in the courtroom. Among the first taped was Judicial Candidate, later Judge, Mary Rose Fante Cunningham, who responded to an alleged gift from Union Business Manager Stephen J. Traitz Jr. with the words, now enshrined on tape, "I shouldn't take it, but . . . it's goin' to my family." Confronted by federal agents, Cunningham, who denies any wrong- doing, agreed to become a wired canary, carrying a tape recorder in her purse to gather evidence.

The investigation has picked up a trail of $300 and $500 payments to judges, which the union describes as Christmas gifts. One tape contained Traitz's statement to Judge Mitchell S. Lipschutz that a roofer's nephew, up on a minor theft charge, "just needs a clean bill to get into the Army." Lipschutz acknowledges receiving money but denies doing any favors in return.

Though the whole petty scenario evokes a kind of low-budget replay of one of the Godfather movies, it is not clear whether Philadelphians are more surprised by the nickel-dime size of the alleged gifts or by what appears to be the extraordinary pervasiveness of the practice. But there is little doubt around the city about the damage to the administration of justice.

District Attorney Castille's office, confronted by an avalanche of new cases, with few judges in sight, has been asking for -- and getting -- exemptions from a state requirement that defendants go on trial within six months of being charged. The result is a further clogging of the overburdened criminal-justice system. The situation threatens to leave Philadelphia with few choices beyond releasing a lot of dangerous individuals because they cannot be tried at one end of the system, while being forced to turn loose convicts from already overcrowded prisons at the other end. "We can't move cases," says Castille, who feels caught in the squeeze. "It gets to the point where you want to walk away from the system. That's how frustrating it is."