Impeachment proceeds in Pennsylvania.

• Position: Supreme Court Justice Rolf Larsen

The last time the Pennsylvania General Assembly removed a judge from office was in 1811 when James Madison was president and Napoleon ruled France.

Few observers expected anything to happen when in early 1993 a young state legislator called for the impeachment of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Rolf Larsen.

But this May, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Larsen for "misbehavior in office."

The House charged Larsen with misconduct, including lying under oath to a grand jury and giving preferential treatment to cases involving his friends and political supporters.

"I feel vindicated that the decision I made in January 1993, which a lot of people questioned, was ratified by the House," said Representative Christopher McNally, the suburban Pittsburgh Democrat who first introduced the impeachment resolution against Larsen.

Larsen's case is now in the Senate. If two-thirds of the Senate vote to convict the justice of the charges lodged by the House, he could be removed from the bench and barred forever from holding a state job.

Senate leaders intend to go ahead with the impeachment trial although a Common Pleas Court judge has ordered Larsen removed from the Supreme Court. In June, Judge W. Terrence O'Brien ordered Larsen to step down after a jury found him guilty of arranging to have doctors prescribe tranquilizers in the names of Supreme Court employees.

Larsen admitted he had resorted to this scheme in order to conceal his long-standing struggle with depression. Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices are elected, and Larsen feared public disclosure of his depression could ruin his career.

Some Senate leaders worry that O'Brien's decision could be reversed on appeal, and the accusations that led to Larsen's impeachment would remain unresolved. A verdict of the Senate in an impeachment trial would be final and cannot be appealed to any court.

In October 1992, Larsen's fellow justices publicly reprimanded him for an improper conversation with a lower court judge on a case in which one of his friends represented one of the litigants. A few weeks later, Larsen demanded that two of the justices who voted to reprimand him be disqualified from further consideration of his case. He accused them of wrongdoing, including case fixing and illegally wiretapping conversations. He also charged that one of them had "commandeered" a car and tried to run him down.

A grand jury and a House subcommittee that investigated Larsen later concluded these...