Opinion ID: 869748
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Overall Perception of Bias

Text: Finally, Ciavarella contends that “the totality of Judge Kosik‟s pre-trial and trial conduct conveyed a message that he loathed Ciavarella and believed that he accepted bribes, thus 27 warranting disqualification.” Ciavarella‟s Br. at 22. We must consider whether recusal is warranted considering the totality of the circumstances involved in the proceedings. See, e.g., United States v. Kennedy, 682 F.3d 244, 259-60 (3d Cir. 2012). Viewing the record in its entirety, it appears that Judge Kosik had serious concerns about Ciavarella‟s alleged conduct. In his correspondence, in the Memorandum rejecting Ciavarella‟s plea agreement, and in his denial of the initial recusal motion, Judge Kosik expressed his belief that Ciavarella‟s conduct amounted to “corruption,” Wojack response, that the undisputed evidence showed that Ciavarella committed the county to housing juvenile offenders “under circumstances amounting to constitutional deprivations,” App. 29, and that due to Ciavarella‟s conduct, “confidence in the judicial system . . . may be corrupted for a time well after this case.” App. 22. Yet a judge‟s negative view of a defendant based on evidence in the record does not constitute actual or apparent bias for the purpose of a recusal motion. The judge who presides at a trial may, upon completion of the evidence, be exceedingly ill disposed towards the defendant who has been shown to be a thoroughly reprehensible person. But the judge is not thereby recusable for bias or prejudice, since his knowledge and the opinion it produced were properly and necessarily acquired in the course of the proceedings, and are indeed sometimes (as in a bench trial) necessary to completion of the judge‟s task. . . . Also not subject to deprecatory characterization as „bias‟ or „prejudice‟ are 28 opinions held by judges as a result of what they learned in earlier proceedings. Liteky, 510 U.S. at 550-51. Here, any negative views that Judge Kosik had of Ciavarella do not arise from extrajudicial source and do not amount to the extreme animus necessary to make fair judgment impossible. See id. at 555. Rather, they arose from the very matters presented to him, especially in the setting of the rejected plea agreement wherein Ciavarella essentially admitted the underlying conduct later found by the jury to be criminal. For these reasons, we hold that there was no abuse of discretion in the District Court‟s denial of the recusal motions.