HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Somber and dignified, the high court in most of the nation's states manage to hew closely to a time-worn image of judicial rectitude.
Then there's the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Brawling, tainted and occasionally ridiculous, Pennsylvania's top court draws notices more worthy of a roller derby team than the Solomonic halls of justice.
To wit:
They are the loser court of the nation, an absolute laughingstock -- Ronald K. L. Collins, law professor, George Washington University.
It's a bad court with no sense of judicial restraint and an overblown sense of its own power and judgment -- Bruce Ledewitz, law professor at Duquesne University.
Decisions from Pennsylvania are either oddities or comic relief -- Pennsylvania state Sen. David Heckler.
Only a week ago, one of those rulings touched off alarms not only in Pennsylvania but across the nation. In a unanimous opinion, the court ruled that a verbal "no" to a sexual assailant is insufficient grounds for a woman to prove she was raped. Women's advocates and prosecutors called the decision a severe setback that would require women to physically resist and risk serious injury to prove rape.
Yesterday, attention returned from the court's judicial judgment to the behavior of one its members. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives formally notified the Senate that it had impeached Justice Rolf Larsen, the heir apparent as chief justice of the court and a man renowned for his eccentricities. The charges against him include perjury, using court workers to get him prescription drugs and giving preference in his judicial actions to lawyer friends.
Justice Larsen is expected to be tried before the Senate this summer. He is the first Pennsylvania public official to be impeached in 183 years.
While the scandal most directly concerns Justice Larsen, 59, he has managed to draw unflattering attention to his fellow justices as well, some of whom he accused of egregious behavior of their own from illegal wiretapping to political payoffs to an attempt to kill him by running him over outside a fancy Philadelphia hotel.
Though a special grand jury ultimately dismissed those charges, it did find a court in severe need of repair, a court where ill-conceived practices and customs and an atmosphere of "suspicion and mistrust" were compromising the quality of justice in Pennsylvania.
The court's rulings are widely perceived to be an inconsistent, illogical muddle. Its internal operations are not considered any better. With no system to track cases, the court is known for long, inexplicable delays in rulings.
In one well-known episode, a trial judge was forced to dismiss the case against a murder defendant because it took the high court more than 3 1/2 years to issue a ruling on evidence.
Bitter court infighting
If Justice Larsen wasn't popular with his colleagues, nobody else seemed to be, either. Nasty memos between members have found their way into the press. And bitter infighting culminated in a courthouse coup in 1989, when associate justices stripped the chief judge of most of his administrative functions while enhancing their own authority over court operations.
"It's an embarrassment," said state Rep. Jeff Piccola, a member of the House Judiciary Committee that investigated Justice Larsen and one of the House members who will prosecute him in the Senate.
Justice Larsen's problems have created renewed hope about the most popular proposal to rehabilitate the court. For decades, reformers have attributed the sickness in Pennsylvania's appellate courts to the method by which judges reach the bench: partisan elections.
Unlike Maryland and a majority of states, Pennsylvania elects its judges after campaigns that now have all the trappings of politics. "These are slam-bang, partisan politics with real fund raising, polling, media consultants and shaking hands," said James E. Tierney, who served as a special counsel to the grand jury investigating the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
A small but influential minority -- particularly labor unions and plaintiff attorneys -- forks over a great deal of money to affect the outcomes of the election.
Many say the ties between money and the courts have destroyed their credibility. "As a litigant, you shouldn't be sitting there wondering if their lawyer made a large contribution to the judge or if yours did," said Lynn A. Marks, executive director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts.
Judge faces accusations
Those relationships are at the center of some of the charges against Justice Larsen. He is accused of maintaining a list of court petitions deserving of his "special handling." The cases involved lawyers who were friends of Justice Larsen's and often financial backers. One was his campaign treasurer. In "every listed case that the grand jury has been able to identify," the grand jury found, "Justice Larsen took some affirmative step to advance the . . . position of his friend or supporter." Usually, that meant using his influence to see that the Supreme Court reviewed the cases of his friends.
If the details of the grand jury report, released last November, were eye-opening to the people of Pennsylvania, Justice Larsen's alleged misbehavior was all too familiar.
A Pittsburgh resident, Justice Larsen first ran for the Common Pleas Court -- the lowest level court -- in 1971. The county bar association rated him unqualified, but he won the backing of the powerful Democratic Party and won the seat. A few years later, he attracted headlines when he started throwing deadbeat fathers into jail. On the wave of that publicity, he won his seat on the Supreme Court in 1977 at age 43.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, on the bench, Justice Larsen was pro-law enforcement, pro-union and pro-women's rights. He was also the biggest champion of plaintiffs.
His idiosyncrasies became legendary.
He had his own pasta brought to restaurants and had underlings stir his soda to remove the carbonation. He held meetings on park benches and in stairwells to avoid being overheard. He worried about his phones being tapped and had his office checked for bugs.
A psychologist later testified that the justice "was afraid of the world. He thinks the world's out to get him." A doctor who treated Justice Larsen called him "a very paranoid man."
Early in Justice Larsen's first term, the Judicial Inquiry and Review Board investigated him for allegedly misusing his office for political purposes and for allegedly using racial slurs in discussing Chief Justice Robert N. C. Nix, who is black. He was eventually cleared of those charges.
Real estate deals probed
As his first retention election approached in 1987, another probe began, this one looking into two real estate transactions in which he had an interest and allegations that he discussed a pending case with a lower court judge, in violation of the state judicial code.
Despite the opposition of a number of county bar associations, Justice Larsen won a second term. The inquiry board also exonerated him in the real estate deal. But for his improper conversations with the judge, the Supreme Court, on a 2-1 vote in 1992, reprimanded him.
Justice Larsen responded in typically fiery fashion. He accused the two justices who voted against him of sleazy activity of their own, including charges that they fixed cases, wiretapped phones, and arranged for witnesses to perjure themselves. His most bizarre allegation was that Justice Stephen A. Zappala tried to run him over outside the Four Seasons Hotel, where the justices were staying in 1992.
The charges prompted the grand jury investigation, which ultimately cleared the other justices of all of Justice Larsen's allegations. Edward S. G. Dennis Jr., a former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia and another special counsel, called the charges "acts of judicial terrorism" and "tantamount to judicial pornography."
Some, however, thought the grand jury was too easy on the other justices.
For example, the grand jury probe exposed the intimate relationship between Justice Zappala and one of the state's most powerful state senators from Philadelphia. Many have questioned that relationship and how it may have tinged the justice's actions in legal matters affecting Philadelphia.
But only Justice Larsen has faced disciplinary action. Last year, an Allegheny County jury convicted the justice of using courthouse personnel to get him prescription drugs. During testimony in that case, Justice Larsen revealed that he had been suffering from depression for many years. Fearful that his career would be damaged by disclosures about his illness, he convinced a doctor to prescribe anti-anxiety medication and anti-depressants in the names of his employees rather than himself.
In addition to the legislature's charges against him, a judicial board accused Justice Larsen of misconduct yesterday for failing to remove himself from at least 21 cases involving his campaign treasurer. Justice Larsen was suspended from the bench after the criminal charges and last week was stripped of his $105,000 annual salary. He could face up to six years in prison for his criminal conviction.
Persecution is alleged
His lawyer, William C. Costopoulos, called the various proceedings against him a "political prosecution that is out of control."
"We believe the Senate will be shocked, and the public will be shocked at the lack of evidence that has given rise to this prosecution," Mr. Costopoulos said.
Court reformers are hoping that Justice Larsen's troubles will lead to passage later this year of a proposal for appointment of justices in Pennsylvania. Some, though, still do not see enough momentum to defeat the trial lawyers and the unions on that issue.
"There's no hue and cry from the public for what is considered the panacea, a merit selection system," said Deborah R. Willig, the former head of the Philadelphia Bar Association. "Until there is, there will be no change."
Even Mr. Tierney, a former Maine attorney general, is not convinced that an appointive system would solve all the court's problems. He points out that a number of states with appointive justices -- New York and Connecticut, for example -- have had their own embarrassments recently.
In Pennsylvania, no stranger to scandal, the tribulations of one justice can command attention only for so long. Even as Justice Larsen's prospects diminish, Attorney General Ernie Preate Jr., the man who spearheaded the investigation into the state Supreme Court, is facing a federal inquiry into his ties to the gambling industry. To Pennsylvanians, his defense sounds familiar.
"I am the victim," he said, "of pure politics."