Remember when Justice McCaffery thought he could blackmail Justice Eakin back in 2014?
This is from Justice Castille's concurring opinion at page 4:
http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/430jadco.pdf?cb=1
Lastly, there is the recent report that Justice J. Michael Eakin was being “asked” by Justice McCaffery to have my public report to the citizens concerning the general content of the pornographic emails Justice McCaffery sent to the Attorney General’s Office be withdrawn from the public realm, or else Justice McCaffery would see to the release of other emails allegedly implicating Justice Eakin in similar conduct (although as yet not identified). In my opinion, that sort of threat borders on criminal conduct. I can see little reason why Justice Eakin would implicate Justice McCaffery in these threats after Justice Eakin self-reported the email account to the Conduct Board, unless the charged conduct by Justice McCaffery actually occurred. It would seem that this report of possible misconduct by Justice Eakin to the Judicial Conduct Board now raises an ethical conflict on the Board’s part, thereby calling for an independent review of Justice McCaffery’s conduct.
Notably, Justice Eakin has stepped forward and has voluntarily asked for a review of the materials released through Justice McCaffery who clearly had knowledge of the content and the provenance of the emails. This is in contrast to the conduct of Justice McCaffery, who continues to blame others for the ethical lapses arising from his own volition and deliberate conduct.
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Of course, Eakin's self report benefited from having his friend Robert Graci overseeing the Judicial Conduct Board.
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Suspended Pa. Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin resigns from bench in email scandal | PennLive.com, 3/15/2016
http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/03/suspended_pa_supreme_court_jus.html
Public revelations about McCaffery's involvement launched an internal inquiry into judicial emails by then-Chief Justice Ronald Castille, and that triggered the fall of another line of dominoes.
McCaffery, apparently in a ham-handed effort to deflect scrutiny on him, allegedly told Eakin that he was aware of inappropriate emails in Eakin's accounts, and threatened to turn them over to the press unless Eakin interceded on his behalf with Castille.
When he did so, Eakin made a public complaint about McCaffery's behavior, a self-reported a partial batch of his own emails to the state's Judicial Conduct Board for review.
The board dismissed the Eakin self-referral in 2014, in what would come to be seen as an at-best incomplete probe led by a longtime friend of Eakin's, Conduct Board Chief Counsel Robert Graci.
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Back to Castille's concurring opinion, he continues by asking a question about how the court could function, and then he calls McCaffery a sociopath:
This Court has a scheduled argument session in the week of November 17, 2014. My question will be: How would it be possible for a court of seven members to sit in judgment of matters as the Commonwealth’s court of last resort when one Justice has brought this level of public contempt by his own actions and has threatened another Justice to intervene illegally on Justice McCaffery’s behalf to change or alter fact-finding in relation to Justice McCaffery’s pornographic emails? Of even more import, how can any party or litigant believe their matter will be heard and decided impartially while these scurrilous charges and accusations remain unresolved?
As a prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, I often had the occasion to review pre-sentence psychiatric reports, although I do not claim to be an expert in the field. One pathology that I do recall, and as confirmed in a review of a prominent medical journal, describes the pathology of an individual who has the personality traits of not caring about others, thinking he or she can do whatever is in that person’s own self-interest and having little or no sympathy for others. The most telling pathology is that when that person is caught, or called out for his transgressions, that person does not accept blame but instead blames others for his or her own misconduct. Those pathological symptoms describe a sociopath. So far in the blame game, Justice McCaffery has blamed the US Marine Corps, the US Air Force, the Philadelphia Police Department, Chadwick Associates, the US Attorney and the FBI, Attorney General Kathleen Kane, now Justice Michael Eakin, and myself for the consequences arising from actions all initiated by him, but thought by him to be of little consequence: just a few “cooked up controversies” by his perceived tormentors.
I agree that this Court cannot continue to function while Seamus McCaffery sits as a Justice. There is no way that citizens could have confidence in the moral authority of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. If we do not have the confidence of our citizenry, all we as a Court do is for nothing. That is why I support the immediate suspension of Justice McCaffery.
While I respect the work of those persons appointed to the Judicial Conduct Board, I am fully aware of the lack of resources and manpower to investigate charges of this unique significance. In the past, this Court has had to loan $35,000 to the Conduct Board to meet payroll when the Legislature denied the Board’s budgetary needs. The AOPC has even had to lend the expertise of our IT department to set up a case management computer program and system when the Board had not had the ability to do so because of a lack of adequate funding. To undertake an investigation of Justice McCaffery’s ethical failures will be an enormous effort by the Judicial Conduct Board which I can only hope will be accomplished by the deadlines in this Court’s order.
For these reasons, left to my own devices, I would immediately refer this matter to an outside neutral fact-finder for a report and recommendations.
