Court summons justice to hearing in bawdy email ethics case

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The ethics case against a suspended Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice over his email practices could be resolved during a hearing in Pittsburgh.The Court of Judicial Discipline has ordered Justice Michael Eakin to be in the courtroom Thursday so it can consider a motion filed jointly by his attorneys and lawyers for the Judicial Conduct Board.Eakin, 67, is accused of violating conduct standards for judges by exchanging emails that contained salacious images and content demeaning toward women, Muslims, immigrants and others.The hearing was scheduled this week just a day after Eakin and the board, which investigates and prosecutes allegations of judicial misconduct, asked the court to consider some "additional proposed stipulations," or facts that everyone can agree on.They said the hearing may lead to a resolution of the ethics charges that, if convicted, could result in Eakin's removal from the bench. The motion was made after the court brought in a mediator, Philadelphia lawyer Dick Sprague.Eakin, a Republican who is a former Cumberland County district attorney, has apologized for what he described as insensitive emails, but has argued his conduct does not merit discipline.The email scandal, centered on the attorney general's office, has already led to dozens of people being disciplined, fired or resigning under pressure.Eakin's involvement first surfaced in late 2014, as the other justices suspended Justice Seamus McCaffery, a Democrat, for his participation in the emails. Eakin made public a claim that McCaffery had threatened to leak inappropriate emails Eakin had received if he did not side with him against a third justice.McCaffery denied threatening Eakin and abruptly retired. The Judicial Conduct Board cleared Eakin, but the board launched a fresh investigation in September, after Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Kane made a fresh complaint that included additional emails that the justice sent and received.The board says that over a four-year period that ended in 2013, Eakin sent or responded to emails that included a satirical video about a busload of "sluts" crashing, a joke about a woman told to keep "her mouth shut" after telling her doctor her drunken husband had beaten her, a "sexually suggestive thread/conversation" about one of Eakin's female employees and a joke about Tiger Woods that referred to his African-American and Asian background.Eakin also, the board said, discussed with golfing buddies a trip to a strip club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and said he had 50 "ones" and a deficit he wanted cured, using a vulgar term for women's breasts.During testimony at a suspension hearing in December, a teary-eyed Eakin apologized, said news accounts were sensationalized and argued that his job performance had not been affected.His trial on ethics charges is scheduled for March 29 in Philadelphia.