First, let’s get the hard truth out of the way. Among our town’s very world-class amenities — a renowned orchestra, amazing public art, delectable restaurants, rocking (if heartbreaking) sports teams — we have long suffered from one abiding embarrassment: A corrupt political class that has numbed a citizenry into apathy.
We can go back to the journalist Lincoln Steffens’ famous dis 125 years ago — “corrupt and contented” — and we can run down just the latest acts of shameful betrayal on our public stage: Dougherty. Henon. Kane. Williams. Fumo. McCord. Estey. Tartaglione. Fattah. Johnson-Harrell. (For a complete list, check out our Public Corruption All-Star Cards — trade ’em with your friends!) We don’t lead the league in a lot of categories, but we’re up there in public official perp walks.
Cultures of corruption don’t die on their own. They’re shamed into submission. That’s why it’s so disappointing when those entrusted with protecting us — like U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl — treat cases of public corruption like any other criminal act, when they’re really corrosive black marks on democracy itself.
“I have a guilty plea from the highest law enforcement officer in the city. He betrayed his office and he sold his office. I am appalled by the evidence that I have heard.” — U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond when sentencing former D.A. Seth Williams
This week, Schmehl sentenced John Dougherty ally Michael Neill to 13 months in prison for embezzling union funds. That’s a little more than half the time prosecutors were angling for. Schmehl then sentenced Dougherty’s other apparatchik, Marita Crawford, to 15 days when prosecutors were seeking up to six months. And he gave no jail time to Dougherty’s assistant, Niko Rodriguez, who instead was sentenced to three years probation for his role in stealing money from the union.
In all the cases, Schmehl credited the defendants’ guilty pleas. He explained that his judgment was informed by O’Neill’s community service; Crawford’s single-motherhood; and the fact that Rodriguez “really appears to be rehabilitated.”
I’m all for compassion in sentencing as a general principle, but now more than ever we need judges to send messages to those who represent us — or seek to influence those who represent us — that placing private gain ahead of public good will be met with zero tolerance. Schmehl rightly fixated on the rank and file Local 98 IBEW members whom Dougherty and his crew stole from. But there was another victim to be taken into account here: Us. The tax-paying citizen. And, really, democracy itself.
Loud and clear?
Keep in mind the 2014 study from Indiana University and the University of Hong Kong, which found that the average Pennsylvanian pays a $1,300 yearly “corruption tax.” Dougherty et al didn’t just steal from the union they were elected to represent; they contributed to our epidemic of public corruption, and are complicit in its concomitant rise in voter cynicism. When democracy is under attack everywhere we turn, we need judges to serve as the last line of defense in the battle for the soul of the body politic. Purists would say that judges ought not to be “sending messages” in their verdicts. But surely, lawmakers — and those enticing them — who violate the public trust deserve extra opprobrium, no?
Contrast Judge Schmehl’s ho-hum sentencing this week with the attitude expressed by U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond seven years ago, when disgraced District Attorney Seth Williams pled guilty in his courtroom to charges of bribery and fraud.
“I have a guilty plea from the highest law enforcement officer in the city,” said Diamond, a protégé of the late, no-nonsense former prosecutor Senator Arlen Specter, a man of sizable rectitude. “He betrayed his office and he sold his office. I am appalled by the evidence that I have heard.”
If voters are tuned out and our judges don’t convey to those who conspire to subvert the public will that there will be serious consequences, exactly who will do the deterring?
And then Diamond broke from precedent and declined to grant Williams time to get his affairs in order while awaiting sentencing, a courtesy granted by other judges toward the likes of former State Sen. Vince Fumo and former State Rep. Chaka Fattah when they’d been convicted of violating the public trust. Instead, Diamond ordered the former DA carted off, handcuffed, into immediate custody.
Diamond’s message was loud and clear: Perhaps the image of Williams cuffed and taken directly to prison will make the next tempted politician think twice. We need more judges who are willing to shame those who flout our laws and agreed-upon ethics, as a deterrent. Shame, sad to say, has gone out of vogue, despite the evidence that it works to clean up governments that go astray. (Hence our alternate approach with Integrity Icon, our partnership with Accountability Lab to name and fame city workers who demonstrate the highest integrity.)
Case in point: The anti-corruption crusading of Antanas Mockus, the philosophy professor-turned-mayor of Bogota, Columbia, in the 90s, when the city was still reeling from the havoc wreaked on it by drug lord Pablo Escobar and a local government of enablers who had been on his lengthy payroll.
Mockus innovatively took on his city’s entrenched way of doing things. He famously hired mimes to mock jaywalking pedestrians on city streets. (Imagine crossing a street against a red light and having a mime march up behind you, holding a “thumbs down” sign above your head the whole time!) Gimmicky? No doubt. But it was the shock treatment a lawless city needed to undergo. When Mockus fired 2,000 bribe-taking traffic cops, it was clear a new sheriff was in town. Soon, citizens rushed to Mockus’ gun buyback fairs, and crime began to drop precipitously.
Notice the silence engendered by this week’s light sentencing? What do you think the chances are that Mockus, if he were here now, wouldn’t have spoken out against Schmehl’s mealy-mouthed decision?
A judge’s job is to punish those who break the social contract in order to deter others from following suit. Philadelphia politics is an ethical and legal Wild West, folks, where nobody deters anyone. If voters are tuned out and our judges don’t convey to those who conspire to subvert the public will that there will be serious consequences, exactly who will do the deterring?
The Fix is made possible through a grant from the Thomas Skelton Harrison Foundation. The Harrison Foundation does not exercise editorial control or approval over the content of any material published by The Philadelphia Citizen.
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