Joan Orie Melvin

PITTSBURGH — A law professor who believes Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin should resign because she’s charged with campaign corruption charges agrees the state Court of Judicial discipline was right to suspend her $195,000 salary.

But Duquesne University professor Bruce Ledewitz also said the court overstepped and “pre-judged” with its scathing rejection of her argument that the criminal case against Melvin is “weak.”

“I’m sorry they did this,” Ledewitz told The Associated Press on Friday. “It seems to me to be very unfair to Justice Orie Melvin. They have not heard her side of the story.”

Ledewitz said the court should have denied Melvin’s salary simply because the charges are “egregious” and undermine public confidence in the courts.

“They should have said, ‘The argument that the evidence is weak is irrelevant,’” Ledewitz said.

Melvin, 56, of Wexford is charged with using her former Superior Court staff to do political campaign work when she ran unsuccessfully for the Supreme Court in 2003 and again when she was elected in 2009.

Melvin was ordered to stand trial along with her sister, Janine Orie, 58, after a preliminary hearing in July in which former law clerks and other staff testified Melvin or Janine Orie — who headed Melvin’s Superior Court staff — ordered them to campaign on state time.

Melvin also is charged with conspiring with a third sister, former state Sen. Jane Orie, who resigned in May and has since been sentenced to 2½ to 10 years in state prison for using her own staff to perform illegal campaign work on her own campaigns. Orie, 50, was acquitted of charges she used her senate staff to politic for Melvin even though Melvin remains charged with conspiring with the former senator to do just that.

Melvin had been suspended with pay since she was charged in May, after which the Judicial Conduct Board asked the disciplinary court to revoke her pay and medical benefits, too. Melvin will keep her medical benefits, but lost her pay subject to Thursday’s 45-page opinion, which blatantly rejected her attorney’s claims that the criminal case was “weak.”

The court’s opinion was authored by President Judge E.J. Curran. Four other judges agreed with it, two recused themselves, and an eighth judge disagreed, saying Melvin should remain on paid suspension.

Melvin’s attorney before the disciplinary court, William Arbuckle, said in a statement, “The decision highlights the difficulty in making credibility decisions using a transcript rather than live witnesses. That said, we respect the decision for what it is: an interim order.”

Dan Brier, one of Melvin’s criminal attorneys, told the AP, “We remain profoundly concerned about the rush to judgment without any due process.” He noted the court’s ruling said it wasn’t going to “decide whether (Melvin) actually did the things with which she has been charged” — only to turn around and do that later in the ruling.

As just one example, the ruling says, “assertions that (Melvin) did not know what her sisters were saying and doing and, for that matter, what her staff and her sister’s staff were doing, test the patience of this court.”

“Oh, geez,” Ledewitz said of that passage. “Talk about pre-judging.”