Joan Orie Melvin Apologizes to Pa. Supreme Court for Stuff Her Lousy Staff Did
Former Pa. Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin has given up her appeal of a conviction on charges that she used staffers in her office for political purposes, and has now written a court-ordered apology to her former colleagues. It sounds very sincere.
AP has the full text. The best part is here:
As a condition of my sentence, the judge ordered that I write letters of apology to every member of the Pennsylvania judiciary and to my former staff members. This has been a humiliating experience. It has likewise brought unfathomable distress to my family.
In reflection, I wish I had been more diligent in my supervision of my staff and that I had given them more careful instructions with respect to the prohibition on political activity set forth in the Supreme Court’s Order dated November 24, 1998.
Somebody might want to find a petulant teenager to give Melvin a lesson in really selling the apology.
Melvin was convicted on charges that she put her state-paid staff to work doing illegal political work, not that she passively and accidentally let it happen by her rogue super-partisan non-partisan staffers. But hey: At least we got a great entry in the annals of non-apology apologies.
