A federal judge has referred Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and one of his top prosecutors to the Department of Justice to face potential charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements in connection with the recent review of a murder conviction from 2009. On September 15, Judge Paul Diamond, who was appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush, said that after reviewing evidence and testimony, the district attorney and his assistants may have violated the law.
In what many in the media are calling a “highly unusual internal struggle,” four top prosecutors in the office have alleged that Krasner, along with the chief of the conviction integrity unit, Matthew Stiegler, were torn because they were attempting to protect their own careers and reputations instead of explaining to the judge why they were withdrawing a motion to review the conviction.
“The credible evidence is tantamount to a prima facie showing of conduct that may constitute false statements, false declarations made under oath, perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy,” the judge said in a 40-page opinion referring the conduct to the U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia. The judge also disqualified both Krasner and Stiegler from the case.
According to a report from KWWL, Krasner, who formerly served as a civil rights attorney, has established a reputation for being one of the most progressive district attorneys in the country. “I respectfully and vigorously disagree with the court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law,” he went on to say in a statement on the matter.
“I look forward to appealing to the higher court as soon as the law allows. This remains a pending matter, which limits for now my and my office’s ability to respond in the media,” he added. Diamond pointed out several of Krasner’s alleged actions, including several accusations that he ordered senior prosecutors to place the blame for errors on a junior prosecutor, failed to reveal the depth of the errors to the judge, and then said there would be “consequences” for the senior prosecutors who wanted to inform the court about the conflict issues.
The case that was under review was the second-degree murder conviction of Dennis Johnson, who was handed a life sentence for the crime in 2010. Fifteen years later, several key witnesses recanted their testimony, and Johnson wanted to have his conviction overturned by arguing ineffective counsel. The District Attorney’s office agreed to that after Stiegler spoke with the defense team and placed a junior prosecutor in charge of the case and told her to carry out his instructions to concede.
Four supervisors reviewed the files in the case during the preparation phase before the hearing. One of them said that the argument Johnson made was “not a winning claim” and a legal filing submitted to the junior prosecutor to the court contained “very significant errors,” the judge’s order found. The junior prosecutor who wrote up the concession brief under the direction of Stiegler was then asked to withdraw the filing and take responsibility with the judge.
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However, she resigned from her position instead, writing in her resignation letter to Krasner that Stiegler had “used me to further his personal agenda of conceding” in cases where the lawfulness of someone’s imprisonment was in dispute, “regardless of the merits.” After her resignation, Stiegler then tried to get the four senior prosecutors on board with blaming the filing on the junior prosecutor.
The four senior prosecutors soon met with Krasner, who told them, “[S]omeone gave me a really good idea. Actually, it was Matt, Mr. Stiegler, that gave me this really good idea. I think that we should go through [the junior prosecutor’s] cases, find mistakes that she made in other cases, say that this was a pattern by her, and then file something with the Court saying that.”
The judge said that the prosecutors objected to Krasner’s idea, suggesting he turn the case over to the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office due to the conflict. Krasner called the attorney general’s office “evil,” and said they needed a person in the room to “protect the office,” going on to refer to everyone in the AG’s office as “Nazis.”
The opinion also stated that one of the prosecutors said that Krasner “said he doesn’t really care about the merits, he would want the person handling the case to not do a full investigation, and he seemed to be caring more about the reputation of the office than about competently handling this case.” Later, the prosecutors withdrew their earlier motion, which is what led to the judge’s inquiry.
“Mr. Krasner does not wish to give this Court a truthful account of how the Concession came to be even though his duty to the Court requires him to do so,” the judge said in his opinion. “He thus sought to direct the very lawyers obligated by law to correct the Concession’s errors to do just the opposite,” Diamond added.
“Even worse, when told that the Four believed they had to alert me, Mr. Krasner responded that ‘there would be consequences for [one of the prosecutors] if she alerted the Court to the conflict issue,’ and that there would be consequences ‘if anyone did,'” Judge Diamond concluded in his opinion referring Krasner to the DOJ.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video