Open letter from Ralph Nader to Chief Justice Ronald Castille

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Ralph Nader
P.O. Box 19312
Washington, D.C. 20036
June 21, 2011

Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille
Pennsylvania Supreme Court
1818 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103

Dear Chief Justice Castille,

This open letter is prompted by your recent opinion in In Re Farnese, which repeats the demonstrable falsehood that the Nader-Camejo 2004 petition drive involved “extensive fraud and deception,” yet fails to acknowledge that the challenge to our petitions – filed by several partners in your former law firm, Reed Smith, LLP – was a product of the criminal conspiracy at the heart of former Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett’s subsequent “Bonusgate” prosecution. See In Re Farnese, No. 13 EAP 2008, 21 (Pa. March 29, 2011) (Slip Opinion enclosed). Such distortion of the facts, if not deliberate, is inexplicable. It is now a matter of public record that state employees working for the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus illegally prepared Reed Smith’s challenge to the Nader-Camejo nomination petitions at taxpayer expense. Further, according to sworn testimony in the Bonusgate proceedings – which remains undisputed – Reed Smith partner Efrem Grail coordinated the state employees’ effort. Yet in Farnese, you maintain that the unprecedented award of $81,102.19 in costs to our challengers was justified by the “extreme circumstances” in our case – ironically, a reference not to the criminality associated with the challenge effort, nor to the evidence and testimony identifying Efrem Grail and Reed Smith by name, but to the unfounded accusations about our petition drive. Slip Op. at 21.

Farnese purports to clarify the circumstances under which lower courts may impose costs in petition challenges, but in fact your opinion establishes no standard at all. Instead, Farnese holds – contrary to the statutory text and legislative intent of 25 P.S. § 2937 (“Section 2937″) – that a court may impose costs against any candidate “as it shall deem just,” subject only to “the discretion of the judicial officer.” Slip Op. at 19. Farnese thus reaffirms the dangerous precedent set in our case, when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court first invoked Section 2937 to assess costs against candidates who defend nomination petitions that they are required by law to submit. Chief Justice Castille, the Jim Crow era ended in large part because the United States Supreme Court struck down such financial burdens in a series of landmark civil rights cases protecting candidate and voter rights. You acknowledge those cases in Farnese but choose to disregard them, Slip Op. at 16, 24, and proceed to enter an opinion that threatens candidates with financial ruin if they defend their right to run for public office. This is not just bad law; Farnese is a direct threat to the “free and equal” elections guaranteed by Article I, Section 5 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

The purpose of this open letter is to correct the public record regarding the falsehoods in Farnese, which would be defamatory were it not for the doctrine of judicial immunity. In addition, Pennsylvania voters must decide whether to retain you in 2013, and they should be informed about the havoc that the “least dangerous” branch (THE FEDERALIST No. 78 (Alexander Hamilton)), under your stewardship, is wreaking upon their democratic form of government by denying voters their free choice of candidates. Finally, we still hold out hope that you will bring your views into conformity with the facts and law, by joining your esteemed colleague, Justice Thomas Saylor, in rejecting both Farnese and the discredited decisions in our case.
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