DA invokes Melvin to rebut appeal by sister
PITTSBURGH – The words of former state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin are being used by a prosecutor who’s trying to block an appeal of the public corruption conviction and prison term handed to Melvin’s sister.
Melvin, 57, is serving three years of house arrest after her February conviction in a related campaign scandal prosecuted by the office of Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala.
His quoting of her in the case of her sister, former state Sen. Jane Orie, is the latest salvo in a war of words waged since Zappala began investigating the sisters in late 2009.
“The Court’s only armor is the cloak of public trust. Its sole ammunition is the collective hope of our society,” Zappala quoted Melvin as saying when she was sworn in as justice in January 2010. A footnote shows the quote was taken from video posted on the website of the Patriot-News of Harrisburg.
Wednesday’s filing comes in response to the Superior Court appeal of the former justice’s sister, Jane Orie. She is appealing her conviction last year of using state-paid staff to work on her own political campaigns and of introducing forged documents meant to discredit a key trial witness. The forged documents prompted Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey Manning to declare a mistrial in 2011.
Orie, 51, was sentenced to 2 ½ to 10 years in prison after a second trial in 2012. She has raised a dozen issues in her appeal, including that Manning was wrong to declare the mistrial, and that the second trial amounted to double jeopardy – or unconstitutionally prosecuting someone for the same crimes twice.
Orie’s attorney, William Costopoulos, has argued prosecutors brought the forged documents to the judge’s attention only because they feared the jury deliberating in 2011 was about to acquit Orie. “The Commonwealth intentionally and deliberately provoked a mistrial in this case,” Costopoulos wrote in his April appeal brief.
But in his response, Zappala said Manning was right to declare the mistrial to safeguard the integrity of the court and to “uphold and promote society’s interest in confronting public corruption and judicial scandals,” subjects Melvin addressed during her 2010 swearing in. Zappala then goes on to quote Melvin in his brief.
Melvin’s attorney, Patrick Casey, declined to comment. Orie’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Ories, conservative Republicans from Pittsburgh’s North Hills suburbs, have continued to maintain that Zappala’s prosecution was a political vendetta. The Democrat prosecutor has denied that, and earlier appellate decisions have rejected such allegations as “frivolous.”
When the investigation first became public in late 2009, the sisters claimed they were being targeted because Zappala’s family – including his father, Stephen Zappala Sr., a retired state Supreme Court Justice – has interests in legalized gambling, something the Ories opposed expanding in Pennsylvania.
The allegations grew uglier when Melvin – after it was known Sen. Orie was being investigated but before the justice was charged – called for an audit of two child care centers that paid kickbacks to two northeastern Pennsylvania judges who sent troubled youths to the facilities. The facilities were co-owned by Gregory Zappala, the prosecutor’s brother, who was never charged in the scheme and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
Zappala contends the investigation began simply because a Senate intern saw Orie’s staffers doing work for Melvin’s successful Supreme Court campaign in October 2009. Melvin was a Superior Court judge at the time.
Orie was acquitted of using her state-paid staff to campaign for Melvin. But Melvin and a third sister – Janine Orie, 59, who worked as Melvin’s aide on both courts – were convicted in February of misusing Melvin’s Superior Court staff and the senator’s staff to work on Melvin’s election campaigns in 2009 and in 2003, when she lost to Justice Max Baer.
Melvin has filed notice that she’s appealing but hasn’t detailed her arguments for a new trial.
The Superior Court isn’t expected to rule on Orie’s appeal for months. As a first-time offender, she is eligible for release from prison in February, when she will have served 75 percent of her minimum sentence.