Common Pleas Judge McDaniel resigns in wake of removal from sex offender cases

Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas Judge Donna Jo McDaniel will step down from the bench at the end of January.

The governor’s office received the a resignation letter from the embattled McDaniel on Tuesday.

The letter, dated Dec. 13, comes in the wake of two state Superior Court rulings ordering her removed from two separate sex offender cases. It stated the resignation is effective Jan. 31.

In her letter, McDaniel called it “my honor and my privilege” to serve on the bench.

“However, above all,” she wrote, “I am most proud of my role in establishing the specialty courts of Domestic Violence and Sex Offender Court.”

McDaniel, 72, was first elected to the Court of Common Pleas in 1985. Before that, she served as a public defender and a Pittsburgh magistrate. She was the first woman to serve as president judge, a role taken over later by Judge Jeffrey Manning.

She wrote that she has worked to run her courtroom in a way “that empowers victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse, while maintaining the rights of the accused.”

She continued: “Now I feel that the time has come for me to focus on the future of my family and on spending time with my daughters and my granddaughters.”

McDaniel, of Sewickley, could not immediately be reached.

In a 13-page opinion issued Nov. 28, the court blasted McDaniel and ordered her removed from a case and that the defendant, Anthony McCauley, be sentenced for a third time. This time by a new judge.

A jury convicted McCauley in November 2014 of nine sexual offenses, for which McDaniel sentenced him to 20 to 40 years in prison. The Superior Court sent the case back to McDaniel in 2016, and she resentenced McCauley to 20 years minus two days to 40 years minus four days.

Defense counsel moved for McDaniel to recuse herself – a motion she denied. The Superior Court noted her denial was “filled with gratuitous comments denigrating Appellant’s counsel and the Public Defender’s office.”

The opinion, authored by Superior Court Judge Alice Beck Dubow, asserted that McDaniel “has shown bias and personal animus” toward McCauley and the public defender’s office, which represented McCauley in trial.

The opinion also noted McDaniel’s sarcasm in her opinion.

“This sarcasm is disrespectful to appellant, counsel and the seriousness of the sentencing process,” the opinion stated.

The opinion called her actions troubling.

Less than two weeks later, the Superior Court again removed McDaniel from a case involving sex crimes, this one involving defendant Gabino Bernal. Bernal had already been sentenced three times by McDaniel, according to court records.

McDaniel first sentenced him in 2013 to nine to 18 years in prison. He appealed and won. McDaniel resentenced Bernal to six to 17 years. He appealed again and won. This time his counsel moved for McDaniel to recuse herself. She denied the motion and sentenced Bernal to the same sentence.

The opinion, issued Dec. 11, found “that (McDaniel) abused her discretion” in denying the motion for recusal and ordered he be resentenced by a new judge.

In a similar instance in July 2016 , McDaniel resentenced a former Pittsburgh Public Schools police officer to the same term after his first sentence was overturned by the Superior Court. The only change she made in response to a Superior Court ruling overturning part of the sentence was to not use mandatory minimums on two counts that the Superior Court subsequently ruled were unconstitutional. McDaniel sentenced him to the maximum sentence on each of those two counts.

Megan Guza is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Megan at 412-380-8519, mguza@tribweb.com or via Twitter @meganguzaTrib.