The Chestnut Hill College community welcomes attorney Marsha Levick, Esq., deputy director and chief counsel of Philadelphia’s nonprofit Juvenile Law Center, on Monday, November 3, at 2:15 p.m. in the East Parlor, St. Joseph Hall.
Levick, an advocate for children’s and women’s rights and a nationally recognized expert in juvenile law will discuss her work in various cases she’s litigated over the years, including her work in the Luzerne County, Pa. “Kids for Cash” kickback scandal involving two elected judges who essentially jailed kids for cash.
In this case, hundreds of kids through the years 2003-2008 were brought to the county’s juvenile court for minor offenses and many without legal representation. Encouraged to waive legal advice and told they would not need it, these juveniles were quickly found delinquent, or guilty, and later transferred to out-of-home juvenile facilities.
In 2008, the Juvenile Law Center petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to vacate the juveniles’ delinquency rulings and to expunge their records. During this process and subsequent investigation, it was determined that the Luzerne County judge accepted nearly $2.6 million in alleged kickbacks from two, private for-profit juvenile facilities to keep them stocked with high numbers of kids. Excessive sentences were given to the children for offenses such as mocking a principal on social media, trespassing in a vacant building, and shoplifting DVDs. The investigation also found the scandal altered more than 2,500 kids’ lives by removing them from their homes and many of them were sent to one or both of the juvenile facilities.
To conclude, the judge and juvenile facilities owners’ pled guilty to federal criminal charges and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated the kids’ adjudications, dismissed their cases and expunged their records. Currently, the Juvenile Law Center is still working with the kids and families on a federal civil rights class action suit.
Levick co-founded the Juvenile Law Center in 1975, and, has worked on many significant cases, including the “Cash for Kids” case. In 2009, the Philadelphia Inquirer presented Levick with the Citizen of the Year award. She has written numerous publications and serves on several advisory boards.
Levick is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Temple University Beasley School of Law. Log onto www.jlc.org for more information on Levick and the Juvenile Law Center.
This lecture is free and open to the public. Contact Professor of Criminal Justice Sara Ellen Kitchen, J.D., at kitchens@chc.edu or 215.248.7176 for more information on the lecture.
