Three in running for new judicial seat in Lehigh County Court
By Margie Peterson
A veteran prosecutor and two private practice lawyers with experience in several areas of the law are vying for a newly created judicial seat in Lehigh County Court.
Patricia Fuentes Mulqueen and Jenna Fliszar are Republicans who cross-filed to compete in both the Republican and Democratic primaries on May 20. Mark Stanziola is a Democrat and is running only in the Democratic primary.
A Court of Common Pleas judge must be prepared to handle criminal trials but also civil cases such as custody disputes, lawsuits involving money or property, divorce, estates and guardianships. The judicial seat is being added to handle a caseload that has significantly grown since 2004, the last time a judge was added to the bench.
In recent interviews, Mulqueen, Stanziola and Fliszar talked about issues ranging from judicial impartiality and balancing compassion with community safety to the need to create a court geared toward military veterans.
Following are profiles of the candidates. They are based, in part, on an interview with Stanziola and interviews given by Mulqueen and Fliszar on host Brad Osborne’s “Good Morning Lehigh Valley” show on WGPA.
Patricia Fuentes Mulqueen
Mulqueen, who is chief of prosecutions in the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office, has worked as a prosecutor in the Lehigh Valley for over two decades and before that worked a couple years as a public defender. She met her husband at what is now DeSales University and, despite frequent moves for his Army career, finished her bachelor's degree in Honolulu, graduating magna cum laude in political science.
She earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. In 2004, she and her husband and three children moved back to the Lehigh Valley and she was hired by then-Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin before becoming a Northampton County Assistant District Attorney and working there for 16 years, the majority of the time as chief of the Violent Crime Unit.
Mulqueen said the new Lehigh County judicial seat is being added mainly to accommodate an increase in criminal cases, and she touted her experience in the field and in making decisions that affect people's lives in profound ways.
"My forte is criminal law," she said in an interview with Osborne.
Asked about judicial discretion in sentencing, Mulqueen said there are guidelines for each type of crime and the judge must weigh multiple factors.
"I think it's important to look as much as you can about the crime itself, the details of the crime, the defendant, and what he's done since the crime occurred," Mulqueen said. "Has he taken any steps to rectify anything or to help himself out, to better himself or herself? What effect has this had on the victim? So that's a real balancing act.”
"I think the most important thing is to make sure that for serious violent crimes that the defendant pays for his or her crime," Mulqueen said.
Justice needs to be served and the guilty must be punished, Mulqueen said. But she also seeks to ensure that defendants leaving prison are "successfully rehabilitated or [have] what they need in order to be a productive member of society so they don't go back to the crime that they committed."
Years ago she prosecuted a 16-year-old who had acted as a lookout for a robbery that involved a weapon. After serving time in county prison, he completed his parole. A couple of years later he was applying to college in another state and needed a letter from the prosecutor to be allowed to live on campus. She wrote the letter and he got in.
"That was a good feeling to know that I was able to help somebody who did rehabilitate himself," Mulqueen said.
She does not believe in legislating from the bench.
"I always say to jurors when I'm selecting them...you may not like the law, you have your own bias because that's just human nature," Mulqueen said. "But you have to set all of that aside and just look at the facts that are in front of you. That's your duty. That's the oath you will take and will you follow it? And if you refuse to follow it, raise your hand now. And some of them do raise their hand."
She's said she's had to navigate the pitfalls of many difficult cases. She's had lots of experience with witnesses and victims who want justice but are reluctant to come to court because they are afraid or angry and don't want to tell the whole story.
"There are so many things that go into doing a hearing, doing a trial and I've been through it all. And I think we need judges who have been through that type of thing in order to successfully preside over a trial."
Her campaign website is mulqueenforjudge.com
Jenna Fliszar
Jenna Fliszar has been practicing law for more than 14 years and owns a law firm in Lower Macungie. She has experience in criminal defense, including as a part-time public defender, and in civil cases in areas such as child advocacy, municipal law and animal law. She also serves as court-appointed counsel in dependency cases in Lehigh County and is assistant city solicitor for the City of Bethlehem, heading litigation and advising such departments as the police, fire and EMS. She is the president-elect of the Bar Association of Lehigh County.
Fliszar graduated magna cum laude from Alvernia University in Reading and later from Rutgers Law School. She and her husband live in Upper Milford Township.
Fliszar said her top priority as a judge would be advocating for the establishment of a veterans court to help military veterans in the criminal justice system with accessing services, including mental health, drug and alcohol counseling, and employment assistance. Lehigh County already has a veterans' mentoring program for those going through the criminal justice system but Fliszar said it should be expanded to help reduce recidivism.
She said one of her earliest cases was representing a soldier in the Army who went out the night before he was being deployed to Afghanistan. He had a few drinks and got pulled over for a minor infraction and was charged with a DUI that could have resulted in dishonorable discharge. Instead, a sympathetic judge worked with Fliszar to get the soldier in a diversionary program.
"Because we had a judge who was willing to step in and consider his individual circumstances and his service to the country, we were able to save him, save his life and ultimately save his job," Fliszar said.
More recently, Fliszar was retained by the parents of Aubrey Wu, a 14-year-old Easton High School student from Palmer Township who had been missing since January. Fliszar announced on April 15 that Wu's parents had hired her as their daughter's lawyer the same day Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta held a press conference saying that the teen had been found uninjured in Jasper, Georgia and the investigation was continuing.
If elected, Fliszar said she would be committed to being impartial to help engender trust in the judiciary.
"It's not anybody's job as a judge to create law," she said. "It's to interpret it and apply it as it's written and to keep out personal opinions and outside pressures when making those decisions."
"When you come into contact with somebody who's charged with a crime, you almost always have some sort of preconceived notions about the crime or the person," Fliszar said. "What I've learned in representing criminal defendants is that every case is unique. Every person is unique, the circumstances are unique. You can't just go into it believing that because somebody is charged with a crime that they're guilty."
Judges need to balance toughness and compassion, she said.
"I think that's the biggest role of a judge, especially in criminal court, is to protect the community but at the same time have compassion not just for the defendants but for the victims and any children caught in the crossfire," Fliszar said.
Her campaign website is: jennaforjudgepa.com
Mark Stanziola
Stanziola is an attorney with the Allentown law firm Fitzpatrick Lentz and Bubba, specializing primarily in family law, including divorce, custody, adoption and support. Over his 37-year law career he has also worked on criminal cases, landlord/tenant disputes, personal injury and other litigation.
Stanziola graduated magna cum laude from the University of Scranton and earned his law degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He has lived in the Lehigh Valley since 1988. He and his husband have an adopted son.
Stanziola is a founding member of the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and helped start the center's legal clinic. He is also on the board of North Penn Legal Services, the LGBTQ Business Council Section of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit in Emmaus.
Like Fliszar, Stanziola supports establishing a veterans court.
"I am 100 percent behind veterans," Stanziola said. "I'm really appalled right now at what's going on with the [U.S.]Veterans Administration and reducing services to veterans."
"You have to get them into the programs and get them help," he said. "The reality is that when I'm a custody master what I see, more times than not, is alcohol and drug abuse problems have gotten these people into this situation and they don't have any help and there aren't any resources available to them."
Stanziola has done work as a Legal Services attorney, representing low-income clients in Carbon County, while in private practice.
Before joining Fitzpatrick Lentz and Bubba, Stanziola worked for other law practices, including what was then Conrad & Conrad in Allentown and the Gardner Law Office in Bethlehem.
With more than three decades of experience in a variety of cases, Stanziola argues that he is the most well-rounded of the candidates.
While Mulqueen told Osborne that the new judicial position would be for criminal cases, Stanziola pointed out that judges sometimes move from civil cases to criminal cases or vice versa.
"The best thing a judge can be is fair, transparent and compassionate," he said. Quoting a judicial maxim, Stanziola said: "You have to be able to recognize a good person who had a bad day or a bad person who needs to go away."
Stanziola said he has had lots of experience in recognizing the difference. He specializes in conflict custody cases and said the successes are often gratifying.
Years ago, he had a custody case in which he worked with the FBI and U.S. Department of State to reunite a child who had been abducted by one of the parents in Poland.
"There's a quote: ‘It's the criminal lawyers who represent the worst people at their best times because they're putting on their best behavior,’" he said. "And family lawyers represent the best people at their worst time because you know it's a horrible thing when your marriage ends, when your kids are in jeopardy, when you don't know where money is going to come from or how you're going to survive.
"I do all kinds of custody cases but generally people search me out for the high conflict ones. It's kind of what I've become known for."
His campaign website is: http://www.votejudgemark.com