 |
| Winkelman's "residence" features a coffin |
for BigTrial.net
Nancy Winkelman, the supervisor of the law division in Philly D.A. Larry Krasner's office, is a woman of integrity.
Just ask her.
"My professional reputation is extraordinarily important to me," Deputy District Attorney Winkelman told U.S. District Court Judge Mitchell Goldberg during a June 23rd hearing, where the judge had summoned Winkelman to explain what His Honor described as a "lack of candor."
"My integrity, my reputation, my candor, my ethics have never been questioned," Winkelman lectured the judge. "And it's something I take very, very seriously," she said, adding that she was "stunned" to learn that the judge had dared to question her integrity.
"My integrity, my reputation, my candor, my ethics have never been questioned," Winkelman lectured the judge. "And it's something I take very, very seriously," she said, adding that she was "stunned" to learn that the judge had dared to question her integrity.
But this self-proclaimed woman of integrity, who gets paid $176,171 a year, has a dirty little secret. According to D.A. Krasner's campaign finance reports filed last year with the city's Board of Ethics, when Winkelman gave her boss a $1,000 donation on March 18, 2021, and a $500 donation on April 10, 2021, she twice declared that she lives in a rundown rental property of tiny one-bedroom apartments located at 650 S. 51st Street in West Philadelphia.
Winkelman, who, as an employee of the D.A.'s office since 2018, is required by the city charter to live in Philadelphia. But where she really lives is in a house on a scenic lake in rural Medford Lakes, N.J., that according to Burlington County property records, she has owned since Sept. 21, 2015. It's a house with a new deck, a sunken hot tub, and a Koi pond that has an estimated value of more than $750,000. That's where a recent visitor to her home found her.
According to New Jersey voting records, Winkelman, who did not respond to requests for comment, is currently registered to vote in the borough of Medford Lakes. A car parked in her driveway has a New Jersey license plate.
It's a cozy set up. Winkelman only shows up at the D.A.'s office twice a week. There, she's a top honcho in Larry Krasner's office where his lenient treatment of criminals has raised the local murder rate from 315 in 2017, when Krasner first got elected, to an all-time record of 562 last year, a 78% increase. [As of yesterday the city has already racked up 306 murders this year, just two percent off last year's record pace.]
And while Winkelman has been sweating it out in the Philly D.A.'s office, working for a humble public servant's wages, her old law firm has been raking it in.
Before she joined the D.A.'s office in 2018, Winkelman for nearly three decades was a partner in the Philadelphia law firm of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP. And since Larry Krasner got elected D.A., the Schnader firm has done very well. That's because D.A. Krasner keeps sending them a steady stream of business.
When Krasner got sued for age discrimination in February 2020 by six former prosecutors that he fired, the Schnader firm was hired to represent the D.A. in court in all six cases.
When Assistant District Attorney Anthony Voci got sued in April 2021 by a motorist that he falsely arrested after he got involved in a road rage incident with her, the Schnader firm was hired to defend Voci and the city in court.
And when former homicide prosecutor Carlos Vega, Krasner's opponent in last year's Democratic primary, sued Krasner for libel in May 2021, the Schnader firm was hired to defend Krasner in court.
On campaign finance reports filed with the city and state, Krasner listed among his campaign debts more than $148,000 that he owes the Schnader firm for just seven months of work on his libel case.
For the Schnader firm, with cases like that, it's potentially worth millions of dollars in revenues.
The city solicitor's office did not respond to a request for information seeking the number of cases the Schnader firm has taken on since 2018, and how much has been paid to them.
Regarding Winkelman's apparent violation of the city charter's residency requirement, a spokesperson for City Controller Rebeca Rhyhart said that "unfortunately, we do not verify personal addresses."
The spokesperson, however, said she would share the information about Winkelman's residency in Medford Lakes with the controller's investigations unit, which reviews residency violations.
Spokespersons for the mayor's office and the city's Inspector General's office, could not be reached for comment.
And as usual, District Attorney Krasner, who promised to be the most transparent Philly D.A., ever did not respond to a request for comment.
Krasner has been stonewalling all of Big Trial's requests for information for the past three years, as has Jane Roh, his alleged spokesperson. At two recent press conferences, Krasner also refused to answer any questions from this reporter.
So we know that Krasner's not talking about Winkelman's apparent violation of the city charter's residency requirement, an offense that in previous years, would get a city employee fired from their job.
But at an April 26th budget hearing, Krasner told the City Council that the residency requirement was a factor in his inability to retain many of the "amazing" young lawyers that he hires.
Krasner complained that not only do his rookie prosecutors get paid low salaries comparable to what a police officer makes, but he added that Philly cops are no longer are required to live in the city, but that his lawyers have to.
"They [the police department] have a relaxed residency requirement, we do not," Krasner told City Council President Darrel Clarke.
As supervisor of the D.A.'s law division, Winkelman oversees the D.A.'s Appeals Unit, appeals under the Post Conviction Relief Act, the Federal Litigation Unit, the Federal Habeas Unit, as well as any civil litigation.
Regarding Winkelman's conflict with U.S. District Court Judge Goldberg, she was one of three top supervisors in the D.A.'s office who were called on the carpet for, in the opinion of the judge, breaching their "obligation to be candid with the court."
At issue was the case of Robert Wharton, who, with a co-defendant, was convicted in 1984 of strangling and drowning to death a minister's son and his wife.
After Wharton and his codefendant got through brutally murdering the couple and ransacking their home, they turned off the heat in the dead of winter and left the couple's infant daughter, then 7-months old, alone to freeze to death. Before they left, the killers even stole the infant's crib.
The D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner got involved in the case, not to protect the public from a depraved killer, or to advocate on behalf of the daughter of the murdered couple, who had somehow miraculously survived being left for dead when she was rescued two days later by her grandfather, who came knocking on the door.
No, in the case of the Commonwealth v. Wharton, the D.A.'s office under Larry Krasner took the side of Robert Wharton, the convicted killer, by trying to get Judge Goldberg to agree to let Wharton off death row.
In doing so, the D.A.'s office claimed that Wharton had rehabilitated himself while in prison.
In making that argument, however, the three supervisors in the D.A.'s office neglected to tell the judge that in 1986, the supposedly rehabilitated Wharton had tried to escape a courtroom in City Hall, and was only stopped after he was shot twice by a sheriff's deputy.
At the June 23rd hearing, Judge Goldberg told Winkelman that the D.A.'s office was required by law to present not only evidence favorable to the argument that Wharton had rehabilitated himself in prison, but also any unfavorable evidence.
"And you withheld the fact that Mr. Wharton violently escaped from a City Hall Courtroom," the judge said. "So why did you do that?"
That's when Winkelman gave the speech quoted above about her integrity.
The judge agreed with Winkelman that "your reputation in the legal community is exemplary," but he added," I am here to ask questions," and, "I'd rather avoid all the speeches."
"So will you answer my question or not?" the judge asked.
"I absolutely will," Winkelman said.
But about her speech about integrity, she told the judge, "I needed to get that off my chest. . . . if it felt like a little grandstanding, I apologize."
Winkelman, however. never did get around to answering the question about why she didn't tell the judge about Wharton's attempted escape. It was something that didn't escape Judge Goldberg's attention.
"So I'm going to ask the question for the third time," the judge said. "Why didn't you tell me that Mr. Wharton, in his rehabilitation as a prisoner, had escaped?"
"So I'm going to ask the question for the third time," the judge said. "Why didn't you tell me that Mr. Wharton, in his rehabilitation as a prisoner, had escaped?"
"We did not withhold evidence," Winkelman insisted. "We followed a practice that the office had followed in numerous other cases."
"We got in the facts at a very high level. And I . . ., " she said before the judge interrupted her.
"You don't think an escape from City Hall's high level?" the judge said.
"I did not know about the escape," she said.
The frustrated judge finally said, "So you know, honestly, I don't think you've answered my question. But I'm going to move on, okay?"
"I answered that the best that I can," Winkelman responded.
The judge couldn't let it go. He told Winkelman that under the law, he was required to do an "independent review" of the motion to get Robert Wharton off death row, but, he "wasn't told about the escape."
In the Wharton case, when Wharton's lawyers made a motion to get their client off death row, instead of fighting it, the D.A.'s office issued what's known as a notice of concession, stating that the D.A.'s office was basically rolling over, or conceding to the defense request.
According to Winkelman, these notices are routinely filed by the D.A.'s office.
"And we have not had an experience with a judge rejecting the concession," she said.
Until Judge Goldberg said no.
"We hadn't had any Judge question it, or have any problems with it," she told Judge Goldberg, "much less to the point of violating a duty of candor that we take so seriously."