Court Opinion

ID: 9765400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:01:50.808997+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:09.503459
License: Public Domain

PAPADAKOS, Justice,
concurring.
I join in the Majority Opinion, but write separately to underscore my deep concern for the total breakdown of judicial discipline in superior court wrought by its former president judge in this case. In a setting painfully reminiscent of the Star-Chamber, abolished now for centuries, the chief administrative judicial officer of superior court, at the urging of qua conspiratorial, yet antithetical, counsel sought to bring about the early release of a convicted murderer in exchange for testimony that might form the basis of subornation of perjury charges against the convicted murderer’s trial counsel.
*157The illicit orders to President Judge Bradley of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court requiring him to oust the Honorable Lisa Richette, the trial judge, of jurisdiction, without cause shown, and to assign the case to one of three judges selected by counsel, and that such hand-picked judge shall, without any trial errors shown, vacate the jury’s verdict of murder of the first degree (carrying with it a minimum sentence of life (18 Pa.C.S. § 1102) imprisonment) and, without question, accept a negotiated plea bargain providing for a conviction of murder of the third degree (carrying with it a maximum sentence of twenty years’ imprisonment (18 Pa.C.S. § 1103(1)), are without precedent and, as stated by our Chief Justice during arguments, mind-boggling.
As a jurist exercising joint supervisory authority over our lower courts, I commend Judge Richette for her heroic methods of “blowing the whistle” on this scheme. Although Judge Richette impermissibly injected herself into the fray as a litigant by filing with us a formal petition (trial judges must never be litigants in cases over which they preside), I view her efforts as coming from a lack of direction by our Court to lower court judges who wish to bring matters of serious judicial concern to our attention. In my opinion, a simple letter to us would suffice.