The Judge Makers

The city’s abuzz about judges who go too easy on hardened criminals. But the problem isn’t just the judges — it’s the shady process they have to go through to get on the bench in the first place. (Pssst … anybody got a few grand to take care of a ward leader?)
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By Robert Huber

ONE DAY IN early March 2007, at the Keystone Building in Harrisburg, there was a lottery drawing. Not for cash, but to decide who would become new Common Pleas judges in Philadelphia. Four slots were open on the city’s highest court, and 27 lawyer-candidates had gotten the thousand signatures required to run. Now it was time to decide ballot position — chits of paper would be pulled from a cardboard box.
 
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of ballot position when it comes to electing judges in Philadelphia. Nothing confirms our ignorance of judicial candidates as much as this: The first name we come to on the ballot is almost always one that is going to win.
 
Two candidates, Mike Erdos and Linda Carpenter, approached the drawing quite differently. For Erdos, this was a moment of truth. He was 41 years old and unemployed, having quit the D.A.’s office in January to run. His wife was expecting their second child. He had no idea what he would do next if he lost this election. Meanwhile, Carpenter, a longtime litigator who lost a run for judge in ’05, had pretty much made up her mind not to run this time — she didn’t even bother to make the drive to Harrisburg for the drawing. Still, she’d gotten the required signatures and was one of the 27 names that would be drawn. Who knew? Maybe she’d get lucky.
 
Mike Erdos, it turned out, wasn’t. When he called his pregnant wife and told her his ballot spot — number 11 — she cried. It was not good. He’d be lost in the pack. A couple Philadelphia ward leaders had already taken Erdos aside to tell him, “You can’t do this — you gotta try and get your job back. It’s just not going to work out.” He agreed with them — he was probably going to lose.
 
For Carpenter, though, it was a different story: She was home lounging in her pajamas when fellow candidate Ellen Green-Ceisler called with the news: Carpenter had been selected for ballot position number one. Whoa! Now she was running, right now, this election. Green-Ceisler herself cried, driving home on the Turnpike, then went for a long walk along Wissahickon Creek to decide whether she was in or out — she’d drawn 19.
 
Mike Erdos stayed in. He felt he had no choice. He’d gone too far to back out, and if he was going to stay in, he was going to go after it. That meant spending money, a huge amount of family money, on everything he could think of: mailings, Inquirer ads, even some TV commercials. It meant paying most of the city’s 69 Democratic ward leaders for the privilege of being put on their sample ballots handed out to voters at the polls.

 
 
Originally published in Philadelphia Magazine, November 2008

  • Victoria

    Mr. Huber, had more people in the CJC known you were writing this article, one of the three well-known defense lawyers I work with might have talked to you. There are LOT of inaccuracies in your article. What a shame. You mention that one PD thinks our judges aren’t capable of engaging the issues in a substantive way, yet you are guilty of the same problem in your article! Lynn Hamlin was, at one time, an ADA. She then got into family law and did a little criminal defense. During her time on the bench, she was considered pro-Commonwealth and a harsh sentencer. She sentenced that defendant to STATE time, and it’s up to the Parole Board to assess him for further criminality. Judges reduce or dismiss charges b/c they HAVE to, not b/c they want to. The law dictates that and you failed to mention that in the case of Judge Frazier-Lyde’s ruling, the Commonwealth can appeal that to the Court of Common Pleas. Did they? If not, was it b/c THEY couldn’t overcome THEIR burden and make ou

  • weldon

    i was sentence by judge fleisher in march of 2004 for a crime idid not commit and she rips the police 48 report in front everybody in her courtroom knowingly and intellengently that their was no evidence against me to support a conviction and she still sentence me to a 1 to 3 jail term she very bias against men and think she can say and do what she want to anybody but like the old saying what goes around always find away to haunt you i ve waited along time to see something like that to happen to her they finally got u thank god

  • Carolina

    Apparently they got sick and tired of her bull.
    To many complaints filed against her by her staff, DA’s, PD’s, Attorney’s and PO’s.
    If she was nice to you, its because she was high.

  • Ian

    I went in front of her last year I ran on probation for 4yrs and went to court almost everyday from may to sept and didn’t know what was going to happen on wk in cfcf next wk didn’t know what to expect but at the end of it all she was very far and the nicest judge I ever went in front of she takes her job serious

  • Bob

    I went before her with my daughter. Her acts on the bench saved my daughter from great emotional harm as she stood strong against a repeat offender that car jacked my daughter, attempted physical and sexual harm and refused to have multiple continuances. she was short with patience but so what!

  • James

    None of this is surprising. I experienced her bullying, compulsive lying and stealing when I dated her in early 1980′s. She’s manipulative and deceitful. I heard the first hand account about her being found stoned on crack in a N. Philly drug house that was raided by Police several years ago. How did this story get squashed! Typical of the Phila. judiciary. Disgraceful!

  • Bernadette

    Apparently the District Attorney doesn’t want to conduct an investigation on Fleisher, I too smell corruption!

  • Emilia

    The woman is crazy and should be put in a mental institution. Additionally why is she still on the bench after being charged with drug possession and has a drug addiction? Who’s responsible for dusting it under the carpet? Even more so, the constant call outs, isn’t their a call out policy?
    How much tax money is wasted on her or are the teamsters paying someone off to keep her on the bench? I smell corruption!!!!

  • diego

    WOW!
    I thought i had seen it all until I caught that act.
    The simple matter of picking a jury turned into Dante’s Inferno in such short time. I never saw a judge talk in such a demeaning manor to both her court staff and the public in the room. It reminded me of 2nd grade Catholics school run by vicious nuns looking for a reason to beat U. We are the fools who elect these people to dole out prison or not? God help the citizens of Pennsylvania

  • Jack

    Judge Fleisher’s actions, reactions, demeanor and behavior are indicative of serious behavioral issues and metal illness, not just quirky personality traits. Ingnoring the obvious casts a cloud over every decision rendered in her court room.

  • Anonymous

    she is crazy and everybody knows it!

  • Ian

    I recently went up in front of her and the way she talks and acts it scares you half to death but you know I toke her the most serious out of all the judges i went in front of but at the end of the hearing she was very fair and very nice one of the best judges CjC has.