Orie Disbarred

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has accepted the consent to disbarment of Jane Orie as a result of her criminal conviction.

WTAE News 4 reported on the downfall of the former state senator and her two sisters, one who had served on the same court that imposed disbarment

Orie’s conviction marked the beginning of the end of the conservative Republican family’s influence in western Pennsylvania.
    
Orie was acquitted of charges that she also made her staff to work on the 2003 and 2009 Supreme Court campaigns of her sister, Joan Orie Melvin, who was then a Superior Court judge. But Melvin, 58, was later charged, tried and convicted separately of conspiring with Orie to have the Senate staffers work on Melvin’s judicial campaigns.
    
Melvin was also convicted last year of misusing her Superior Court staff during the same campaigns. A third sister, Janine Orie, who worked as Melvin’s court aide, was also convicted.
    
Melvin has been removed from the Supreme Court seat she won in 2009. Her conviction and most of her sentence, including three years’ house arrest and $55,000 in fines, was upheld by the Superior Court last month.

And from Huffington Post on the criminal case

A former Pennsylvania state senator has been sentenced to prison on charges that she illegally used her legislative staff to do campaign work and then forged documents to cover it up.

Republican Jane Orie was ordered to serve her 2  1/2- to 10-year state prison sentence immediately Monday and was taken from the courtroom.

The 50-year-old suburban Pittsburgh attorney was convicted of five felony counts involving theft of service and conflict of interest for using her state-funded staff to perform political fundraising and campaign work, and nine related misdemeanors. She resigned from the Senate in May.

(Mike Frisch)