Pennsylvania justice retires amid email controversy
Justice J. Michael Eakin. Image from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin is retiring amid an ethics probe over emails labeled “insensitive and inappropriate.”
Eakin’s lawyer, William Costopoulos, announced the retirement in a press conference on Tuesday, report Pennlive.com, the Legal Intelligencer (sub. req.), the Allentown Morning Call and Philly.com.
Eakin is the second Pennsylvnia justice to face an ethics probe over emails; Justice Seamus McCaffery retired in October 2014 after he was accused of sending more than 200 sexually explicit emails from his personal email account.
A disciplinary hearing for Eakin had been scheduled for March 29. He was suspended with pay in December. Eakin’s lawyers have emphasized that he didn’t send most of the offensive emails, though he had received them.
The ethics complaint said the sent emails, from a “John Smith” email account of Eakin’s on a government computer, included “subject matter that involved nudity, gender stereotypes and ethnic stereotypes.” Received emails included “photographs of nude or semi-nude women, video clips of comedic skits that had sexually suggestive themes” and “jokes based on negative social and gender stereotypes,”the complaint said.
Costopoulos said in an interview with the Legal Intelligencer that Eakin had already accepted responsibility in the email exchange, and he hoped Eakin would be able to keep his pension.
The “tipping point” toward retirement, Costopoulos said at the news conference, was when Pennsylvania’s Court of Judicial Discipline refused to consider a mediated settlement reached between Eakin and the Judicial Conduct Board.
“We have lost one of the finest jurists of our court in the recent past,” Costopoulos said at the news conference. “His opinions and writing will withstand the test of history. What has happened to him, and what has been done to him, will not.”
“This is the only process I know of in America where you can be charged with sending emails to friends that were inappropriate and face the death penalty,” Costopoulos said. “I just don’t think that’s right.”
