Justice Eakin was suspended as Supreme Court justice of Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Reports say that the suspension comes after Eakin’s alleged involvement with exchange of porn emails. Eakin, 67, has been elected as the State’s Supreme Court in 2001.
According to a state judicial ethics court, the recent email exchanges of Eakin which includes nude photos of women, inappropriate jokes and “salacious” internet memes have tainted the court system. The contents of Eakin’s emails have been described as insensitive with regards to gender, sexual orientation and race by a three-judge panel of the Court of Judicial Discipline. The Daily Mail reported the news.
"The only means to ensure the public's confidence in the Pennsylvania judiciary is to suspend (him) pending the full trial," the panel wrote.
To this end, Eakin is officially suspended from his judicial and administrative duties immediately beginning today.
According to Fox 43, Justice Eakin admitted sending and receiving the offending emails in his testimony. At present, he’s scheduled to appear at a pre-trial conference sometime in January. He’ll also undergo a full hearing which could lead to his permanent removal from the position.
Despite of this admission, Eakin insisted that the recovered emails did not hinder him from doing his job – Reading Eagle has learned. However, the judges emphasized that they have become deeply troubled in the possibility that the offensive views expressed in the emails have brought a negative impact on Eakin’s judicial performance.
Eakin’s suspension, with pay and medical benefits, is considered to be the latest fallout from an email scandal in Pennsylvania’s legal and law community for over a year. In 2014, fellow Justice Seamus McCaffery decided to abruptly retire after being suspended due to his participation in the email exchange.
While email scandals is no longer surprising these days, Justice Eakin’s suspension gives the public a good amount of confidence with the judicial system. It remains to be seen whether Eakin could still get out of this mess; we can only hope that he gets what he deserves.
