By Victims of major public corruption cases in Pennsylvania and Illinois have expressed outrage over President Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency this week to two convicted officials.
The commutations were announced Thursday as part of a historic clemency package for 1,500 convicted criminals 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 – both had already been released from prison early and put on house arrest during the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden’s actions now end that punishment.
The president has already faced bipartisan criticism over his highly controversial pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted earlier this year of 12 tax and gun-related offenses.
A Biden administration official told CNN that the commutations were not made on an individual basis but were part of a uniform policy applied to those who met specific criteria, such as maintaining good behavior while on house arrest.
President Joe Biden, wearing a Team USA jacket and walking with his son Hunter Biden, heads toward Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on July 26, 2024.
‘Got it absolutely wrong’
Former Pennsylvania Judge Michael Conahan was convicted in 2011 in what was infamously called the “kids-for-cash” scandal, where he took kickbacks from for-profit detention centers in exchange for wrongly sending juveniles to their facilities. The case was widely considered to be one of the worst judicial scandals in Pennsylvania history. Like all of the other nearly 1,500 people who got commutations from Biden this week, Conahan was freed from prison due to Covid. His house arrest was set to end in 2026.
The misconduct of Conahan and another Luzerne County judge led the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to throw out 4,000 juvenile convictions, and the discredited state judges were ordered to pay $200 million to the victims, according to the Associated Press.
Sandy Fonzo – the mother of Edward Kenzakoski, who died by suicide after spending time behind bars as part of the kickback scheme – said she was “shocked… and hurt” after learning of Biden’s decision to commute the rest of Conahan’s punishment.
“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 the Citizens’ Voice, a local outlet. “This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer. Right now, I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain that this has brought back.”
Former Dixon Comptroller Rita Crundwell exits the Lee County Courthouse after her arraignment on felony theft charges on Oct. 31, 2012, in Dixon.
‘Justice Wasn’t Served’
Similar discontent arose in Illinois after Biden granted clemency to Rita Crundwell, the former comptroller of Dixon, a city of about 15,000 residents in northern Illinois. Crundwell had pleaded guilty in 2012 to embezzling $54 million from the city in what is considered the largest municipal fraud case in U.S. history. She was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison, close to the maximum, but was transferred to house arrest during the pandemic. According to the Bureau of Prisons, her house arrest was supposed to last until 2028.
“When I heard the news, I was completely shocked in disbelief, I was outraged and felt a complete sense of betrayal from the federal justice system, the White House and the president,” Dixon city manager Danny Langloss told CNN in an interview on Friday.
Langloss, who said he doesn’t affiliate with a political party, was the police chief when Crundwell’s fraud was uncovered. He said he believes “justice wasn’t served here.”
“I don’t like the idea … that with several more years of her sentence to complete, she gets to walk free in the community that she betrayed and stole from,” Langloss said.
Sandy Fonzo confronts Judge Mark A. Chiavarella on the courthouse steps after he was convicted in the “Kids for Cash” scandal in 2011. Fonzo’s son, who eventually committed suicide, was among thousands Chiavarella had sent to a juvenile detention facility from which he’d received a “finder’s fee.”
Fallout from the Pandemic
Margaret Love, who served as the U.S. pardon attorney in the Justice Department from 1990 to 1997, pointed out that the controversy over Biden’s commutations stems from pandemic-era efforts to reduce the prison population, a policy initiated under 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 about 12,000 inmates from federal prisons into home confinement. Many of these people have since completed their sentences, though plenty remain on house arrest.
“Many people who were sent home were convicted of white-collar or nonviolent offenses and were considered safe bets to behave in the community,” Love said, adding that she believed the decision-making was tainted by racial discrimination.
Addressing criticism of Biden’s clemency, Love argued that his actions simply finalized what had already begun. “Biden essentially cleaned out this population, removing the option of sending them back to prison,” she said.
With grumblings among some Republicans about sending these convicts back to prison, Love said Biden “simply cleaned out 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.
Former Luzerne County Court Judges Michael Conahan, front left, and Mark Ciavarella, front right, leave the United States District Courthouse in Scranton, Pa., in 2009. The two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of children who fell victim to their crimes.
