Court Opinion

ID: 9730718
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:21:42.401048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:08.866667
License: Public Domain

EAGEN, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The Judicial Inquiry and Review Board of this Court has recommended that The Honorable Arthur D. Dalessandro, a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County, be subjected to public censure. I would accept the Board’s recommendation.
Conceding that some findings and conclusions of the Board lack support in the testimony introduced before the Board, nonetheless Judge Dalessandro’s admissions in his testimony before the Board as to his relationship and conduct with Judith Walton, without more, are sufficient in my view to warrant and support the Board’s recommendation of censure. This Court has imposed public censure on attorneys for less.
Under the Code of Judicial Conduct, a judge is required to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in “all of his activities.” Moreover, he must refrain from conduct which “brings the judicial office into disrepute.” To read these rules of conduct as restricted to activities while a judge is clothed in a robe or “acting in his or her official capacity” is pure sophistry. The conclusion that the relationship of the respondent and Mrs. Walton, existing and carried on over a period of years, did not “bring the judicial office into disrepute” I cannot accept.