Trial Date Set for Orie Sisters [View All]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10260/1088258-100.stm

Trial date set for Orie, sister
Friday, September 17, 2010
By Paula Reed Ward, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

An Allegheny County judge this morning set a date for the criminal trial of state Sen. Jane Orie, and her sister, Janine Orie.

Jury selection for the case is scheduled to begin on Feb. 7. All pre-trial motions in the matter must be filed by Nov. 8, to be followed by a hearing on those issues before Judge Jeffrey A. Manning on Dec. 13.

Jane Orie, R-McCandless, is charged with 10 counts, including theft of services, tampering with evidence, conspiracy and violating the state ethics act. Janine Orie faces charges of conspiracy and theft of services.

Both women are accused of using the senator's staff on state time to work on the 2009 campaign of another sister, Joan Orie Melvin, in her successful bid for a seat on the state Supreme Court. Janine Orie worked on Justice Melvin's court staff, and is currently on leave.
(More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.)
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It is of interest that Judge Jeffrey Manning will be the trial judge. He is the Administrative Judge of the Criminal Division of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. (There are 12 judges in this division.) This means that Manning is the Judge who decides which cases will be assigned to which judge. While being the Administrative Judge entails extra work, it also carries the perk of letting Manning cherry-pick which cases he will self-assign, so to speak. He typically assigns the really high profile cases to himself, because this gives him lots and lots of publicity, which always comes in handy when he comes up for re-election.

Publicity shines a spotlight on every decision the judge makes - so I don't expect Manning to cut the Ories any breaks out of deference to their sister, who is a Pennsylvania State Supreme Court Justice (and who herself is under investigation in this matter.)
He wants the "tough on crime" PR, not "letting a judge's relatives off easy" PR.