Specifically, anyone who had a criminal case in the Wayne County Court of Common Pleas where Brendan Ellis prosecuted and Judge Matthew Meagher presided or made ANY appearances, even if the public record does not specifically state so.
Ellis and Meagher were law partners. They ran a firm together — Meagher Ellis Law, 1018 Church Street, Honesdale. When Meagher took the bench in 2021, Ellis was already an Assistant District Attorney. That means the person prosecuting you and the person deciding your case used to shared clients, shared revenue, and shared an office with both their names on the door.
We want to hear from you if:
— You were a criminal defendant in a case where Ellis prosecuted and Meagher presided
— You or your attorney raised a conflict of interest and were told it wasn’t an issue because the partnership “predates” the case
— You were told the prior relationship didn’t matter, that it had been addressed, or that you had no standing to raise it
— You accepted a plea deal in a courtroom where you believed the judge and prosecutor had a relationship that wasn’t disclosed to you
— You went to trial and felt like the rulings were going one direction before the evidence came in
We are not asking for your opinion of the outcome. We are asking a factual question: were you ever told, on or off the record, that the Ellis-Meagher relationship was not a conflict? Were you ever told it had been waived, screened, or resolved? Or were you never told about it at all?
Pennsylvania’s Code of Judicial Conduct requires a judge to step aside when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. A former law partnership is one of the specific examples the Code lists. The question is not whether Meagher ruled fairly in your case. The question is whether he should have been on your case in the first place.
Wayne County has two judges. If the system is working correctly, cases with this conflict get assigned to a visiting judge from outside the county. If that didn’t happen in your case, we want to know.
Your name will not be published without your permission. Send everything you have — docket sheets, transcripts, letters from your attorney, notes from hearings — to:
tips@poconoreview.com
All communications confidential.
PoconoReview.com