Former Greene County Presiding Judge Farley Toothman’s state pension has been revoked after he was found guilty of judicial misconduct while serving as a judge.
The Pennsylvania State Employees Retirement System confirmed this week that Toothman’s pension was “forfeited” on March 17, the same day he was formally removed from judicial office by the Pennsylvania Court of Judicial Discipline. state and barred from sitting on the bench again.
The information was released Thursday as part of a request for records opened by the Observer-Rapporteur. No further details were provided by the PSERS in its one-page email response to the newspaper.
In addition to being ejected from the bench, Toothman was ordered to write letters of apology to those he suffered. However, the Court of Judicial Discipline has no control over state pensions, meaning that the PSERS was the government agency responsible for deciding whether its pension plan should be terminated.
The Court of Judicial Discipline ruled last July that Toothman “engaged in such extreme misconduct as to bring discredit to the judicial office” when he retaliated against a courthouse employee and a another person on probation. The eight-judge panel found that Toothman abused his time on the bench and “committed serious misconduct” in two cases that breached rules of judicial conduct in 10 of the 21 counts the Judicial Conduct Board brought against him in May 2020.
In three other cases, the Court of Judicial Discipline found that Toothman may have violated procedures, but there was no clear and convincing evidence of ethical violations.
Toothman had served as a Greene County judge for 11 years until retiring in January 2021, nearly eight months after the misconduct charges were filed.
