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Pennsylvania justice in porn scandal quits

 
McCaffery
McCaffery
Published Oct. 28, 2014

Investigation ends

Pennsylvania justice in porn scandal quits

A Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice caught up in a government porn email scandal stepped down Monday after nearly eight years on the state's highest court, and a judicial ethics board said it would drop its investigation of him as a result. Justice Seamus McCaffery's retirement took effect immediately. The decision followed a disclosure that he had sent or received 234 emails with sexually explicit content or pornography from late 2008 to May 2012, and an accusation by a fellow justice that McCaffery had tried to coerce him into taking his side against Chief Justice Ronald Castille. McCaffery, 64, is at least the fifth public employee to lose his job over the scandal, which grew out of an internal review by the Attorney General's Office into how it handled the Jerry Sandusky child molestation investigation at Penn State. The others, who all resigned, were the secretary of environmental protection, a lawyer in that agency, a state parole board member and a county prosecutor. McCaffery, a Democratic, was elected to the high court in 2007.

Associated Press