In the contest for a lone seat on the seven-member state Supreme Court, the State Democratic Committee endorsed Superior Court Judge Jack Panella of the Lehigh Valley as its candidate for the state’s highest court in February at its meeting.

He’s the only Democrat running in the primary and will go up against whichever Republican wins on their three-way primary ballot: either fellow Superior Court judges Joan Orie Melvin and Cheryl Lynne Allen or Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Paul Panepinto.

Melvin of Allegheny County received her party’s endorsement at its committee meeting in February. Recent court scandals, specifically two former judges in Luzerne County facing jail sentences for corruption in illegally sentencing hundreds of juveniles to detention centers in exchange for bribes, are of deep concern to the state’s highest court and the overall image of the state judiciary and whether it can hold the public’s trust.

The Juvenile Law Center, based in Philadelphia, asked the court to intervene last year when it found evidence that juveniles were routinely denied the right to counsel and put into detention centers for minor infractions.

While the court suspended the two judges without pay and approved a special masters to overturn the convictions, it only did so after a criminal indictment of the two jurists.

The issue is important to the Supreme Court because technically and legally the seven justices of the high court are supposed to “supervise” all of the lower judicial branches in the state, ranging from district magistrates to Common Pleas Courts and the state Superior and Commonwealth Courts just below them.

Melvin, Allen and Panepinto all agreed that the Supreme Court needs to be more transparent in its workings to the public and that judges’ images need to be refined.

At a candidates’ forum in Harrisburg, all three agreed that all judges should be required to attend mandatory ethics seminars as lawyers are required to do.

Melvin, who has served as a judge for 23 years at the local, county and state levels, earned some notoriety with her unsuccessful lawsuit in 2006 seeking to refuse a pay raise that the Legislature approved for all state judges in 2005.

A ruling upheld by the state Supreme Court said the state constitution bars the courts from paying Melvin less than her Superior Court counterparts. Melvin said she continues to return the untaxed portion of that raise to the state Treasury, although she does accept annual cost-of-living increases as she previously did.

Allen, who as an Allegheny County judge spent more than a decade presiding over juvenile cases, says the court system faces a “crisis of confidence.” She is especially critical of the handling of the Luzerne County case and the amount of time it took to uncover the wrongdoing.

“Nothing was done about it until the indictment came,” Allen said, adding that prosecutors and other juvenile justice officials share responsibility for reporting improprieties. “When these kinds of things come to your attention, they need to be looked into.”

Earlier this month, Panepinto said judges should recuse themselves from cases involving major donors. But when asked to name his campaign donors, he and the other Supreme Court candidates either didn’t know or refused to do so.

But it was recently revealed in a Capitolwire.com news account that Panepinto received a $102,000 campaign donation in his 2007 run for the Supreme Court from a litigant who appeared before him in 2005 when he was still on the Philadelphia bench.

In May 2005, Texas law firm Williams Bailey represented two women suing pharmaceutical giant Wyeth Industries of suburban Philadelphia over damage they claimed to have received from the weight loss drug fen-phen. The jury awarded the women $200 million. Panepinto said the award was disproportionate to the case and declared a mistrial. The case reached a private settlement before a new trial could begin.

The firm is the judge’s biggest campaign donor to date in his Supreme Court bid. In 2007, Tim Saler, a spokesman for Panepinto, said the contributions were raised by a Panepinto friend who helped raise money for then-President George W. Bush in Texas.

Judicial candidates are prohibited from raising funds on their own and must rely on a political committee to do it for them. Judges are even barred from attending their own events.

Saler also said that Panepinto did not have any personal contact with any of the Texas donors, nor did he direct his fund-raiser friend to seek out those firms.

So far, only early and minimal campaign finance reports for 2009 are available.

In 2007, Melvin ran for retention and received major donations of $20,000 from Ira J. Gumberg, of JJ Gumberg Co., a Pittsburgh development company, and $10,000 from James A. West of Butler, Pa. In that campaign, which asked voters to choose to retain or oust her from office, she spent $132,000, according to state campaign finance records.

In 2007, in winning her seat on Superior Court, Allen accepted $53,000 from major GOP donor John Templeton. For that campaign, she raised a total of about $200,000, according to state campaign finance records.

In 2003, Panella raised more than $1.1 million successfully campaigning for a seat on the Superior Court, including $200,000 in donations of $10,000 or less, mostly from Lehigh Valley attorneys, businessmen and political activists.

All four candidates are rated “highly recommended” by the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Judicial Evaluation Commission.

The evaluation commission gives a “highly recommended” rating to the candidate that it believes possesses the highest combination of legal ability, experience, integrity and temperament and would be capable of outstanding performance as a judge or justice of the court for which he/she is a candidate.

A rating of “recommended” would indicate that the evaluation committee believes the candidate would be satisfactory in his/her performance as a judge or justice of the court.

The commission rates a candidate as “not recommended” if it believes he/she is inadequate to perform the job of judge or justice satisfactorily or if a candidate refuses to participate in the commission’s evaluation process.

Panella said he expects a vigorous effort by the Republican Party to regain the one-vote majority on the Supreme Court that turned to the Democrats’ favor in 2007. The outcome could take on unusual importance in the likely event that the court is drawn into the legislative redistricting that will follow the 2010 census.

For Superior Court, there are three vacancies open on that appellate court for civil cases. The State Democrat Committee endorsed Philadelphia judges Anne Lazarus and John Younge and Allegheny County Judge Robert Colville for the three spots.

The evaluation commission rated Lazarus as “highly recommended” and gave Younge and Colville ratings of “recommended.”

Also running on the Democrat ticket in the primary for Superior Court are Philadelphia Judge Paula Patrick, Lackawanna County Judge Tom Munley and Allegheny County attorney Kevin Francis McCarthy. All three were rated as “recommended” by the evaluation commission.

The state Republican Party endorsed Allegheny County Judge Judy Olson, Tioga County attorney Sallie Mundy and Allegheny County attorney Temp Smith. Olson rated a “highly recommended” while Mundy and Smith received a rating of “recommended.” All three are the only Republicans running for Superior Court.

Commonwealth Court, which mostly hears cases involving government agencies, has two vacancies to be de filled in the November general election.

Philadelphia Judge Jimmy Lynn and Allegheny County attorney Daniel Bricmont received the state Democrats endorsement as candidates for the two openings. Both were rated “recommended” by the evaluation committee.

The evaluation commission only gives a “recommended” or “not recommended” rating for candidates to the Commonwealth Court.

Other candidates running on the ballot as unendorsed Democrats this May include Allegheny County attorneys Linda Judson, Barbara Behrend Ernsberger and Michael Sherman and Philadelphia County attorney Stephen Pollock. Judson, Pollock and Sherman revived a “recommended” rating but the commission rated Ernsberger “not recommended” citing a lack of appellate experience, scholarly writing and teaching.

The Republicans endorsed State Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board Judge Al Frioni and Dauphin County attorney Kevin Brobson. They both received a “recommended” rating from the evaluation commission.

A third unendorsed Republican, Allegheny County Judge Patricia McCullough, is also running on the GOP ballot and was rated as “recommended” by the commission.

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