9 Judges Charged With Philly Traffic Ticket Fixing

9 Judges Charged With Philly Traffic Ticket Fixing

 It may have happened late last month, but it's still something worth discussing: how 9 judges were charged with traffic ticket fixing in Philly.

According to ABC News, a "widespread culture of giving breaks on traffic citations" persisted in the city, federal prosecutors alleged, though everyday citizens were out of luck. Only the well-connected got breaks.

Defense attorneys suggested that the judges made no money from the favors and that the court has worked that way for a century.

The defendants include six current and former Philadelphia traffic court judges and three suburban judges who had stints at the court. Among them is former Traffic Court Judge Willie Singletary, who had been kicked out of office for showing cellphone photos of his genitals to a female clerk. A court clerk and two businessmen also were charged. 

Philadelphia Common Pleas Adjudicator Gary S. Glazer, a above federal prosecutor broke by Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald Castille to apple-pie up cartage court, hailed Thursday's allegation as a "very absolute footfall against reforming the institution."

"It has historically been a awfully afflicted place," he told The Associated Press.

The state's Judicial Conduct Board confused bound to append the board after pay, awaiting the outcomes of their cases. Cartage cloister judges, who are not appropriate to be lawyers, accomplish about $91,000 per year.

Philadelphia area leaders and Democratic Burghal Committee associates, forth with ancestors and friends, consistently contacted the board to seek advice with cartage tickets. Board would barter favors if the case wasn't assigned to them and would either abolish or abate the ticket, allowance bodies abstain abrupt fines and credibility on their licenses, authorities charged.

The board and their staffs took accomplish to adumbrate the arrangement of "consideration" by shredding paperwork, speaking in cipher and befitting a bound circle, according to cloister papers.

"A well-understood cabal of blackout fell over the arrangement and its participants," the allegation said.

The arrangement kept alarming drivers on the alley and beggared the burghal and accompaniment of revenues, U.S. Attorney Zane Memeger said.

Defense attorneys said their audience never took a dime, and artlessly did things the way they've been done for decades — and the way they were accomplished to do.

"It's been my acquaintance that any little old adult in the suburbs ... can airing in to her bounded cloister judge, and apprehend to get a abridgement in her charge," said Singletary's lawyer, William J. Brennan. "I don't anticipate that's fraud. It's aloof affectionate of the way it works."

The 77-count allegation acclaimed that Singletary had aboveboard campaigned on a swear that he would do favors for supporters.

"There's activity to be a bassinet activity about because I'm active for cartage cloister judge, right, and I charge some money," the allegation quoted Singletary as adage at a 2007 motorcycle club meeting. "I got some being that I got to do, but if you all can accord me twenty dollars you're activity to charge me in cartage court, am I appropriate about that? ... Now you all appetite me to get there, you're all activity to charge my hook-up, right?"

The allegation additionally accuse Singletary with lying to the FBI and three board with lying to the admirable jury.

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