We need to ensure that juries, and not judges, are deciding the most important issues that govern our affairs, with common law grand juries, in particular, derived from the people, and not controlled by the courts, further serving as a check on the abuses of government.
One of the lessons that should have been learned, at least locally with the “Kids for Cash” scandal, was that We, the People, cannot and should not exhibit blind confidence in what is happening in our courts. Yes, the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC) issued a review following the Kids for Cash scandal, offering 51 recommendations concerning the family court/guardian ad litem (GAL) system in a glowing 112-page document, letting Us, the People, know that the errors of the courts were on their way to being remedied. It is a review that praised the efforts of one Judge Chester Harhut as well as Attorney Danielle Ross, the former Lackawanna County guardian ad litem (GAL) who pleaded guilty to federal tax charges and is currently serving jail time.
But as she performed her own research Fisher learned a tragic truth about how deep the rabbit hole of corruption really extended. “Over 3,000 kids were incarcerated during Kids for Cash, and I’m going to tell you how they did it: they picked all of the low-income students who were on the school’s free student lunch program. They knew they couldn’t afford attorneys before they ever even went into court.”
Mrs. Mickman fears judicial and court retaliation for sharing her story with the Gazette, but feels she is simply out of options. While she and her children once lived a very comfortable upper-class lifestyle, she is now left financially devastated as a result of her decade-long legal horror story.