Pa. Supreme Court criticizes former justice who received reprimand over Jerry Sandusky case

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday took umbrage at recent comments made by former Justice Cynthia Baldwin, who was reprimanded by the court’s Disciplinary Board in July for her handling of the Jerry Sandusky investigation when she served as general counsel at Penn State University.

“Attorney Baldwin has seen fit to cast blame for her problems on everyone else involved in her case, including the Disciplinary Board, the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the Superior Court and the individual clients,” four justices wrote in a statement. “Attorney Baldwin’s failure to take responsibility for her errors now continues after she received her sanction.

“The court’s direction that Attorney Baldwin receive a public reprimand was based not on favoritism or bias, but solely on her professional and ethical failings as detailed in our unanimous opinion.”

In an interview Wednesday, Baldwin said she was shocked the court would issue a statement over this issue.

“This is not about me,” she said. “The outcome of the court cannot be changed.”

The Supreme Court issued a 70-page opinion ordering a public reprimand of Baldwin in February, finding that she improperly testified at the grand jury during the Sandusky investigation, after she had appeared there as counsel for Penn State administrators who had been called as witnesses.

In July, that public reprimand was given by the Disciplinary Board.

Since then, Baldwin has asserted — through an affidavit from the judge that presided over those grand jury proceedings — that now-Chief Justice Thomas Saylor made statements about her in a conversation in 2012.

According to an affidavit authored by former Northumberland County Common Pleas Judge Barry Feudale, he had a conversation with Saylor at a judicial conference in Hershey in 2012.

Saylor told Feudale there was a forthcoming disciplinary complaint against Baldwin for her involvement in the Sandusky investigation, and Saylor urged Feudale to assist in the inquiry, the affidavit said.

Saylor also told Feudale, who signed the sworn affidavit in August 2019, that Baldwin “ ‘caused us a lot of trouble when she was on the Supreme Court with her minority agenda.’ ”

Baldwin, of White Oak, served on the court in 2006 and 2007. She initially said she did not know about the affidavit until her attorneys got it from Feudale as part of her disciplinary case.

“If the affidavit is as sworn, it shows bias and vindictiveness” in the disciplinary process against her, Baldwin said in July.

Saylor, who did not participate in the court’s disciplinary action against Baldwin, has denied making any statements about her causing trouble because of a minority agenda. Based on the allegations made in the affidavit, he is now the subject of an informal inquiry by the Judicial Conduct Board.

In their statement issued Tuesday, the four justices who meted out Baldwin’s discipline — Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, David Wecht and Sallie Mundy — said that she failed to present the affidavit earlier in the process even though there was ample opportunity to do so, including a full hour of oral argument before the court.

“Attorney Baldwin points now to the untested affidavit of a former senior judge regarding a disputed conversation with then-Justice Saylor more than seven years earlier, but she did not make that affidavit known to the justices who decided her case,” they said in their statement. “Moreover, Chief Justice Saylor did not participate in the decision of her case.”

Baldwin said the affidavit would not have been pertinent to her own disciplinary matter and therefore wasn’t cited during oral argument.

But, she continued, she does believe that the allegations made against Saylor in the affidavit deserve a full and thorough investigation by the Judicial Conduct Board.

“I think that’s what’s owed to everybody — the public and everybody involved in it,” Baldwin said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.