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With One Notable Exception, Pa. High Court E-Mails Get Clean Review

By Pat Loeb

HARRISBURG, Pa. (CBS) -- A review of e-mails sent and received by Pennsylvania Supreme Court personnel found nothing improper, outside of the previously discovered pornographic ones that forced Justice Seamus McCaffery to resign.

Special counsel Rob Byers says he combed nearly 5,000 e-mails -- any between a justice and the state attorney general's office between 2008 and 2012.

The court ordered the review after learning that Judge McCaffery had sent adult images and videos to an assistant attorney general.  It wanted to be sure there were no exchanges that might have tainted cases.

Byers says there were not.

"By and large, people should feel comfortable that our Supreme Court justices and other judges are doing their jobs and doing them well, and doing them appropriately," he said today.

Byers says he found McCaffery and his wife (who was also his aide) were prolific senders of e-mail blasts with jokes or inspirational messages.

"They find things on the Internet and they like to share it with their friends, and he did quite a lot of that," Byers notes.

Byers says when you took those out of the group, along with duplicates and auto-replies, there were less than 200 between justices and the attorney general's office, and all were appropriate.

 

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