Court Administrator William Murray said Senior Judge Barry F. Feudale has been assigned by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts to hear charges against Mr. Eagen.

The AOPC needed to appoint a judge from outside the county because members of the Lackawanna County bench served with Mr. Eagen and recused themselves from presiding at his trial.

Judge Feudale will begin work April 28. Thats the date set for oral arguments on a series of pre-trial motions filed by Mr. Eagen.

Mr. Eagen, who lost a retention election in 1997, is charged with bribing Philip Bosha, a former Scranton insurance executive whom the former judge appointed guardian of estates of elderly incapacitated persons.

Mr. Bosha, who is serving a one- to three-year sentence for looting the estates he was to guard, testified he made payments to Mr. Eagen to show his appreciation to the former judge for appointing him guardian.

Mr. Bosha also testified that when federal, state and county authorities began closing in on him and others involved in looting the estates, Mr. Eagen suggested he commit suicide rather than talk about kickbacks he was paying the judge.

Mr. Bosha said he made five payments totaling $1,850 to Mr. Eagen. Four were given to the judge in his chambers in the Lackawanna County Courthouse, he said. Mr. Eagen has denied receiving any such payments.

In his pre-trial motions, Mr. Eagen wants charges dismissed on several grounds, including prosecutorial misconduct.

The latter is directed at Lackawanna County District Attorney Michael Barrasse, who Mr. Eagen alleges repeatedly and improperly leaked details of a grand jury probe to the news media in an attempt to politically ruin the former judge and enhance his own political ambitions.

If the charges are not dismissed, Mr. Eagen wants his trial moved outside Lackawanna County or jurors from another county be brought in because of the extensive, graphic, sensational, inflammatory and slanted publicity the case has attracted locally.