Pennsylvania: Crime and Corruption and Gambling

Attorney: Alcohol, gambling addictions clouded Toole's judgment
By Michael R. Sisak (Staff Writer)


SCRANTON — Former Judge Michael T. Toole tore through a 30-pack of beer a night at the height of the alcoholism and “pathological” gambling addiction that clouded his judgment and complicated his final years on the bench, his attorney told a federal judge Friday.

The 51-year-old father of two hit rock bottom after federal prosecutors charged him two years ago with illegally accepting free use of a New Jersey beach house and failing to pay taxes on an attorney referral fee — charges he is scheduled to be sentenced on April 8.

Since then, Toole has made a remarkable recovery, attorney Frank Nocito told a federal judge this morning at a hearing on Toole’s objections to a pre-sentencing report.

Toole completed an in-patient program at the Marworth Treatment Center in Waverly, sees an addiction counselor and regularly attends meetings of the 12-step support group Alcoholics Anonymous, Nocito said.

He no longer drinks, no longer gambles and has repaired relationships with his wife, Donna, and college-aged son and daughter.

“He recognizes it’s an ongoing process,” Nocito told U.S. Judge Richard P. Conaboy. “Step by step, day by day, and it’s continuing.”

Toole’s drinking evolved from the casual curiosities of high school and college to full-on alcoholism as an adult, manifesting in the late 1990s in a daily pattern of work followed by long hours at the bar, drinking and gambling, Nocito said.

Toole, noticeably slimmer and more vibrant than when he pleaded guilty to an initial set of corruption charges in December 2009, declined to comment as he left the hearing.

Conaboy ordered the hearing after Nocito objected, in a court filing, to the value assigned in the pre-sentence report to Toole’s use of the beach house and the characterization that his use of the home in 2006 and 2008 constituted multiple gratuities.

Posted at 1:20 p.m.: Suspended attorney explains Toole's use of N.J. beach house

SCRANTON — Suspended attorney Harry Cardoni revealed this morning that he invited corrupt former Luzerne County judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan to use the same New Jersey beach house where ex-Judge Michael T. Toole spent parts of three summers, but that they refused.

Cardoni, testifying at a hearing on Toole’s objections to a pre-sentencing report on charges he accepted an illegal gratuity and failed to pay taxes on a finder’s fee, said he also provided at least annual gifts of lobster to Toole, Conahan and Ciavarella and that he provided ex-Judge Ann H. Lokuta with kielbasa.

Toole’s objections led to a postponement of his sentencing, which had been scheduled for today, until April 8.

Toole’s attorneys objected to the pre-sentence report’s characterization of Toole’s use of the beach home as multiple gratuities and asked for a reduced sentence based on the amount of “rehabilitation” Toole has already gone through.

Prosecutors say Toole rewarded Cardoni by appointing an arbitrator hand-picked by Cardoni to hear an insurance case in which Cardoni represented the plaintiff.

Cardoni said in court this morning “friendship” was the only motivation he had for offering Toole use of the beach house. Cardoni said Toole first used the home in 2005.

Federal prosecutors, who only charged Toole with crimes related to his 2006 and 2008 trips to the shore, said they were not aware of Toole’s earlier use of the home until his attorneys brought it to their attention.

Cardoni said he and Toole schemed to create paper trail to cover ex-judge's "free" use of a N.J. beach house in 2008, amid rumors of a federal probe into courthouse corruption.

Cardoni says he gave Toole $8,400 in cash so Toole could write him check covering $7,500 rental fee and have $900 on hand for emergencies.

Cardoni's law license has been suspended by the state Supreme Court, but he faces no criminal charges.

Toole also pleaded guilty to failing to report a $30,000 finder's fee he accepted from another attorney who represented a relative of Toole's wife in a civil case in another county.

That attorney, Robert J. Powell, testified for the prosecution last month in the trial of Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., who faces 13 or more years in prison after being found guilty of racketeering and other charges.

Powell, whose law license has been suspended, faces a likely sentence of 21 to 27 months in prison for failing to report a felony and abetting tax evasion in the Ciavarella case.

Ciavarella, Toole and Powell are among more than 30 people charged in an ongoing public corruption probe.