Judge DiClaudio Faces Removal Over Sentencing Note

CASE FILE AT A GLANCE
Judge	Scott DiClaudio
Court	Court of Common Pleas, First Judicial District (Philadelphia), Pennsylvania
Proceeding	Judicial Conduct Board complaint, 2 JD 2025, filed September 9, 2025, before the Court of Judicial Discipline
Conduct Alleged	June 12, 2025, in his robing room
Counts	Six, under Canon 1 Rules 1.1 and 1.2, Canon 2 Rules 2.4 and 2.10, and Pa. Const. art. V, sec. 17(b) and sec. 18(d)(1)
Relief Sought	Removal from office; the Board’s complaint also sought suspension without pay and revocation of the probation imposed in his earlier case, 3 JD 2019
Prior Discipline	A 2016 private letter; a 2021 order imposing two weeks without pay, probation, and a mentor, for the violations found in 3 JD 2019
Current Status	Hearings complete, decision pending. Reporting indicates he was suspended without pay in November 2025
Note	Allegations only. The Court of Judicial Discipline has made no findings and imposed no sanction in this matter.

What the Board Alleges

The alleged encounter lasted less than a minute and turned on almost nothing being said out loud. According to the Board, DiClaudio had his judicial assistant find out whether Judge Zachary Shaffer was on the bench and then bring him upstairs. When Shaffer arrived, DiClaudio produced a piece of lined paper with three things written on it: a defendant’s name, Shaffer’s courtroom number, and the date of a sentencing set for the following Monday. He held it out, asked “OK?”, and then destroyed the paper. Shaffer testified that DiClaudio added that he probably would have done the right thing anyway.

The defendant was due to be sentenced by Shaffer on an illegal gun possession charge. He is not named here; he is a criminal defendant who had nothing to do with any of this, and the series does not name non-judge parties. The Board’s filing notes that he had social ties to a well-known Philadelphia musician whom DiClaudio also knew, which is the connection the Board offers to explain why DiClaudio would have taken an interest in a case that was not his.

Shaffer recused himself from the sentencing.

What DiClaudio Says

He has not disputed that the conversation was improper. His position is that it was a misunderstanding rather than an attempt to fix a sentence, and he has expressed regret in direct terms, saying he wished he had never said it and that he was not thinking. His account places the episode in the context of having met the defendant by chance at a concert, after which, he says, he was complimenting Shaffer’s temperament rather than asking him for anything.

Then There Were the Recordings

Courtrooms in the First Judicial District run digital audio recording systems, and that turned out to matter. Testifying under oath before the Court of Judicial Discipline, DiClaudio denied summoning Shaffer at all, saying he had been unaware Shaffer was going to walk in and that the visit was unannounced and unexpected.

Recordings from June 12 in both courtrooms, reported in December 2025, captured DiClaudio asking his assistant whether Shaffer was on the bench and to call down and check, and captured the assistant telling Shaffer minutes later that chambers wanted to see him. That contradicts the sworn account. The Board did not charge DiClaudio with perjury or with a lack of candor, and the counts in the complaint all concern the June 12 conduct rather than his later testimony. But a disciplinary court assessing credibility and deciding on a sanction does not need a separate charge to notice a contradiction in the record in front of it. Board deputy counsel Elizabeth Hoffheins described the conduct as an abuse of judicial privilege, made behind closed doors.

The Discipline Ladder (Pennsylvania)

Pennsylvania splits the work three ways. The Judicial Conduct Board investigates and files charges. The Court of Judicial Discipline, a separate court, holds a trial, makes findings, and imposes the sanction. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court hears the appeal. That is an unusually formal structure: the judge gets an actual trial before an actual court, not a commission hearing.

The sanctions run from a private or public reprimand, through suspension with or without pay, to removal from office, and the court can add conditions such as probation or a mentor. It can also revoke probation imposed in an earlier case, which the Board has asked it to do here.

Why Judge-to-Judge Is the Hard Case

Most ex parte problems are easy to spot. A judge talks to one side without the other present, and the rule against it is close to absolute. Judge-to-judge contact is harder, because the ethics codes expressly allow it. Texas Canon 3B(8) forbids ex parte communications about pending matters but carves out, in subsection (d), “consulting with other judges or with court personnel.” Pennsylvania’s rule works the same way, and for good reason: judges need to be able to ask a colleague how a statute has been read, how a sentencing guideline usually applies, or how to handle an unusual procedural tangle. A courthouse where judges cannot talk to each other about law is a worse courthouse.

The problem in this case is not that one judge spoke to another about a pending case. It is what was allegedly being communicated. A question about how the guidelines work is consultation. A slip of paper with one defendant’s name and one sentencing date, handed over by a judge with a personal connection to that defendant and then destroyed, is not a request for legal guidance. The line is not who is talking. It is whether the conversation is about the law or about the outcome for a particular person.

That is also why the Board’s choice of counts is interesting. One of them, Canon 2 Rule 2.4, governs external influences on judicial conduct, a provision usually invoked when a judge is the one being leaned on. Charging it against the judge doing the leaning treats a sitting colleague as an improper outside pressure, which is the right instinct and a somewhat unusual use of the rule.

How It Works in Texas

A Texas judge in the same position would be answering under at least two canons. Canon 3B(8) is the ex parte rule and its consultation exception, discussed above. The other is Canon 2B, which says a judge “shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others,” and shall not “convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.” Canon 2B is the better fit for what is alleged here, because the whole force of the gesture came from the fact that the person making it wore the same robe.

Procedurally, Texas routes this differently than Pennsylvania. There is no separate trial court for judicial discipline. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct investigates and imposes sanctions itself, up to public censure, and only a removal recommendation leaves the Commission, going to a Review Tribunal of appellate justices. A Texas judge sanctioned short of removal can instead demand a Special Court of Review and a fresh trial. The series has covered the Texas ex parte problem before, in Case File No. 27, where an El Paso district judge was publicly admonished for ex parte communications during a murder trial. For the full walk-through of the Texas process, see our explainer, Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained.

If You Think Someone Leaned on Your Judge

Recusal is the first and fastest remedy, and here it is the one that worked. The judge who received the alleged nudge took himself off the sentencing. In Texas, a motion under Rule 18a goes to the judge, who either recuses or refers it to the regional presiding judge; Rule 18b supplies the grounds, including that the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

Get the specifics on the record. A disqualification motion built on atmosphere goes nowhere. One built on a documented communication, a witness, or a recording is a different motion entirely. Courtroom audio, docket entries, and calendar records are all discoverable or obtainable.

A tainted proceeding is a due-process argument, not just an ethics complaint. If an outside communication actually reached the decision-maker in your case, that is an argument for a new hearing or a new sentencing on appeal. An ethics violation by itself does not undo a judgment; a demonstrated effect on your proceeding is what can.

The two tracks are independent. A conduct complaint will not get you resentenced, and winning a new sentencing will not sanction anyone. File both if both apply. In Texas the complaint goes to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, free and without a lawyer.

The Counts

Count	What the Provision Requires
Canon 1, Rule 1.1	A judge shall comply with the law, including the Code of Judicial Conduct.
Canon 1, Rule 1.2	A judge shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary, and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.
Canon 2, Rule 2.4	A judge shall not be swayed by partisan interests, public clamor, or fear of criticism, and shall not permit family, social, political, financial, or other interests or relationships to influence the judge’s judicial conduct or judgment.
Canon 2, Rule 2.10	A judge shall not make public statements that might reasonably be expected to affect the outcome or impair the fairness of a matter pending or impending in any court.
Pa. Const. art. V, sec. 17(b)	Judges shall not engage in activity prohibited by law and shall not violate any canon of legal or judicial ethics prescribed by the Supreme Court. Charged as a derivative violation.
Pa. Const. art. V, sec. 18(d)(1)	The disrepute clause: conduct that brings the judicial office into disrepute is independently sanctionable.

These are charges, not findings. The Court of Judicial Discipline has not sustained any of them, and a complaint from a disciplinary board is an accusation in the same way an indictment is.

A Record That Is Already on the Books

The Board is not arguing from this episode alone. DiClaudio received a private disciplinary letter in 2016 over his treatment of staff. In December 2019 the Board charged him in 3 JD 2019 over a long-running legal fight with a Montgomery County fitness club and his financial disclosure filings. In December 2020 the Court of Judicial Discipline found he had violated the code, concluding that he had repeatedly ignored orders to pay roughly $9,500 to the club and had failed to disclose nearly $300,000 in combined state and federal tax liens on required statements of financial interest. The court called the conduct egregious and found it had brought the judiciary into disrepute.

The sanction that followed in 2021 was two weeks without pay, probation, and an assigned mentor. The probation ran to January 2026. The Board’s current complaint asks the court to revoke it. There is also a separate pending matter from 2025 alleging that he used his judicial position to promote his wife’s business, which is its own proceeding and not part of the removal petition.

Prior discipline is the hinge in almost every removal case this series has covered. A first offense draws a reprimand. The argument for removal is almost always that lesser sanctions were already tried and did not take, which is exactly what the Ohio Supreme Court said in Case File No. 40 and what the Maryland commission said in Case File No. 23.

How It Played in the Press

The Philadelphia Inquirer has owned this story from the start, through the judge’s leave in July 2025, the charges in September, the recordings in December, and the removal argument in October 2026. Its December 2025 piece on the courtroom audio is the single most consequential bit of reporting in the file, because it set the sworn testimony against the recording. Coverage has consistently led with the celebrity connection, which is how a local judicial-ethics case became a national one.

Where Things Stand Now

The Court of Judicial Discipline heard two days of testimony and has the matter under advisement. A decision is expected within months. The court can dismiss the charges, impose a reprimand, suspend him with or without pay, or remove him from office, and it can act on the earlier probation. Whatever it does can be appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, so even a removal order would not be the end of it.

Philadelphia voters retained every judge on the retention ballot in November 2025, including judges the city bar association had declined to recommend. Whatever happens to DiClaudio will be a decision by a court, not by an electorate. The Gavel of Shame will follow up when the court rules.

Facing the System in Texas? You are entitled to a judge who decides your case on the record, and there are rules and remedies when that goes wrong. Deandra Grant Law handles federal and state criminal defense in Texas. Call (214) 225-7117 • texasdwisite.com

Sources

PRIMARY SOURCE

• Judicial Conduct Board of Pennsylvania, press release and Board Complaint, In re: Judge Scott DiClaudio, 2 JD 2025 (Sept. 9, 2025). judicialconductboardofpa.org
• Pennsylvania Court of Judicial Discipline: court cases and dockets. pacourts.us

NEWS COVERAGE

• The Philadelphia Inquirer: Judicial disciplinary court weighs whether Philly Judge Scott DiClaudio should be removed from the bench (Oct. 1, 2026). inquirer.com
• The Philadelphia Inquirer: Courtroom recordings raise questions about Judge Scott DiClaudio’s testimony (Dec. 16, 2025). inquirer.com
• The Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly judge on leave after being accused of trying to influence case (July 12, 2025). inquirer.com
• The Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly judge suspended over failure to pay health club and filing incomplete financial forms (July 8, 2021). inquirer.com
• The Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly judge found to have violated the judicial ethics code in legal feud with Montco fitness club (Dec. 4, 2020). inquirer.com

REFERENCE

• Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 3, including the Canon 3B(8) ex parte rule and its consultation exception. law.uh.edu
• Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 2, including Canon 2B on lending the prestige of judicial office. law.uh.edu
• Deandra Grant Law: Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained. texasdwisite.com
• Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct: how to file a complaint against a Texas judge. scjc.texas.gov

This post summarizes a publicly filed judicial-conduct complaint and news reporting for general informational purposes as of publication. It is not legal advice. The charges against Judge DiClaudio in 2 JD 2025 have not been adjudicated; the Court of Judicial Discipline has made no findings and imposed no sanction in that matter, and nothing here should be read as a statement that he committed the conduct alleged. The criminal defendant whose sentencing was at issue is not named, is accused of no wrongdoing in connection with this matter, and no inference about him is intended.