By Ralph Ciprianofor BigTrial.net
Only in Philadelphia where our incumbent District Attorney is currently under federal indictment for political corruption could the citizens be poised to make a worse choice for their next D.A.
That would be Larry Krasner, the George Soros-financed radical "progressive" who just won the Democratic primary for D.A. Now he's running for election this November in a town where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7 to 1.
Krasner is a longtime civil rights lawyer who has sued the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times, on behalf of drug dealers and protesters from groups such as Black Lives Matter, ACT UP and Occupy Philly.
Larry's the guy who talked our current corrupt D.A. into tossing more than 800 convictions of drug dealers, nearly all of whom had pleaded guilty after getting caught with drugs. For his next trick, Progressive Larry sued the city to gain cash rewards from the taxpayers that will ultimately benefit 300 newly emancipated drug dealers. The drug dealers are currently in magistrate court, awaiting those cash payouts arranged by their good friend Larry.
Yes, Larry loves to defend drug dealers who poison our citizens and protesters who block our streets during rush hour. Larry's dedicated his life to emptying the jail cells of Philadelphia. But that crusade may turn out to be bad news for the rest of us.
"A grand social experiment" is how Beth Grossman, Krasner's GOP opponent, describes Krasner's campaign financed with more than $1 million of George Soros's money.
"We have one of the finest public defender's offices in the country," Grossman says. "We don't need two."
Krasner is a 56-year-old former public defender who wants to abolish cash bail and the civil asset forfeiture program. He could not be reached for comment.
"Larry is away on vacation until after Memorial Day," said his spokesman, Ben Waxman. "He's not doing any press interviews at all, including national outlets like the N.Y. Times, CNN, Fox News, and the L.A. Times."
Grossman, however, is not on vacation. She's a 49 year-old former assistant district attorney under Lynne Abraham who was a prosecutor for more than 20 years. She favors cash bail and formerly led the D.A.'s civil asset forfeiture program.
This week, Grossman had plenty of time to talk to Big Trial about the many shortcomings of our current incumbent D.A., Rufus Seth Williams, and the many dangers posed by the candidacy of Let-'em-Loose Larry.
Let's start with the case of those six former narcotics officers who were accused of beating and robbing a bunch of drug dealers. But they beat the rap when a jury in 2015 acquitted all six defendants on all 47 charges of a 26-count federal indictment.
Let's recap the role that Rufus Seth Williams played in that fiasco which is currently costing the taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees to pay 10 lawyers from two private law firms to defend the city. And millions more when those 300 newly emancipated drug dealers cash in on Larry's lottery.
Rufus Seth Williams is the guy who wrote a letter to the police commissioner in 2012 announcing that without benefit of an investigation of any kind, he would no longer prosecute any drug cases brought by those narcotics officers. Rufus promptly leaked that letter to Fox 29. Then, Rufus let Larry Krasner talk him into letting more than 800 drug dealers previously arrested by the narcs go free.
Of the 800 convicted drug dealers freed by Larry and Rufus, I was able to track the criminal records of more than 400. Of the 400, more than 200 were subsequently re-arrested on charges that included rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with a gun, attempted murder and murder.
So thanks, Larry and Rufus for unleashing a crime wave on the citizens.
In a Feb. 22nd interview with fellow progressive Holly Otterbein of Philly Mag, Krasner claimed credit for talking Rufus into freeing 800 drug dealers.
Here's what Progressive Larry told Progressive Holly:
"I had a particular case in which a college student was charged with drug activity, and I filed a request, which went to the district attorney, the Police Commissioner, and all their top deputies demanding that they provide exculpatory information that would show what they knew about whether or not these officers were involved in lying under oath, stealing money, falsifying probable cause, backdating warrants, and things of that sort."
"The District Attorney's office vigorously resisted that request . . . Finally the judge says, 'No if you have it, you have to turn it over.' Then the District Attorney's office dropped the case against my client, basically, so they wouldn't have to turn the information over."
Sadly, Larry's wrong about one really important fact. The D.A.'s office under Rufus Seth Williams had no such evidence of police misconduct of any kind, not one document to turn over.
How do we know this? Because in court records, Public Defender Bradley S. Bridge made the same assumption that Krasner did, namely that if the D.A. was publicly trashing those cops the D.A.'s office must have been sitting on a mountain of evidence of police misconduct.
But here's what court documents filed by the public defender had to say about that topic:
"On Dec. 6, 20l2, Bradley S. Bridge, an attorney from the Defender’s Association of Philadelphia, wrote First Assistant District Attorney Edward McCann, Esquire, and formally requested, pursuant to Brady v. Maryland, material regarding the six officers contained in District Attorney Williams’ Dec. 3, l2 letter" [to the police commissioner] the public defenders wrote in a motion for a new trial.
"First Assistant [Edward] McCann verbally told Mr. Bridge that they were dismissing the cases because of prosecutorial discretion and that there was no Brady information," the public defenders wrote. "Attorney Bridge subsequently requested Brady material again and on Jan. 8, 20l3, First Assistant District Attorney McCann again denied being in possession of Brady material."
[Brady material refers to the landmark 1963 case, Brady v. Maryland, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors must turn over any evidence that might benefit a defendant in a criminal trial.]
So there you have it folks, rampant misconduct on the part of Rufus.
What does Beth Grossman have to say about the former narcs?
"I didn't watch the trial; I can't speak to their guilt or innocence," she said. "I don't know enough to make an informed decision."But she knows enough about the case to say that Rufus blew it.
"Making any determination about any case must and should always be based on what is the evidence," she said. "And whether there is evidence or whether there is no evidence. Or whether that evidence is illegally obtained."
"Everything has to be based upon evidence," Grossman repeated. "Listen if Seth Williams and his group made that decision based on what you are telling me was no evidence, and now they [the drug dealers] are being rewarded of for illegal activity, of course that is very upsetting."
"I was never privy to any of those decisions," she said. But "we have police officers who were tried and acquitted. And we have people who pleaded guilty [the drug dealers] in the middle of a huge opioid and heroin crisis, individuals that were arrested and pleaded guilty to this and are going to walk."
"It's incredibly devastating for the city of Philadelphia," she said. The drug dealers "have pleaded guilty" and in many cases were "in possession of a lot of drugs," Grossman said. Also, the "money seized from them that was to be forfeited was returned to them."
In his Philly mag interview, Krasner the racial provocateur dismissed the jury verdict in the narcotics officers' case as the actions of "an all white jury, which is drawn in federal court from Lancaster and Red Hill and a lot of other places where Donald Trump is a popular guy."
No wonder The Philadelphia Tribune refers to Larry as the "Blackest white D.A. candidate ever."
But I covered that trial and that verdict was all about the evidence. The federal prosecutors put on the worst case I've ever seen. They relied on wild stories told by a crooked cop and 19 over-rehearsed drug dealers who used the same catch phrases.
And here's what mattered to the jury: every time the prosecutors had a chance to corroborate any of the drug dealers' tales with evidence, they failed to do so.
The result: a unanimous jury verdict that blew out all the charges in a RICO case. The prosecution case, the foreman told me was "absolutely nothing."
"It almost got to the point where you almost wanted to make jokes about it," the jury foreman said. When it came time to deliberate, "I could have been out of there in 10 minutes. That's how easy it was."
In his Philly mag interview, Progressive Larry was proud of his role in arranging that free lottery for the 300 freed drug dealers:
"My law firm and I were selected to be chief counsel for the plaintiffs," Krasner told Philly mag. So we are effectively the tip of the spear in terms of dealing with the civil cases against these individual officers and the city of Philadelphia."
Sadly, the people getting shafted by that spear are the taxpayers, who not only have to pay millions of dollars to hire 10 private lawyers to defend the city, but also millions more in payouts to the 300 drug dealers.
Nice work, Larry.
"I have no idea why you would not charge that case," Grossman said. "I find that incredibly befuddling."
I asked Grossman about how she would handle domestic violence cases in the wake of our district attorney going soft on abusers. In case you missed it, as the D.A. was gearing up for reelection, before he got hit with that federal indictment, the prosecutors in his charging unit were declining to prosecute cases where the D.A. stood a chance of losing.
The most prominent type of case that the D.A.'s office under Rufus Seth Williams was declining to prosecute: domestic violence. On this blog we documented cases where victims were stabbed, shot, and strangled into unconsciousness. The cops had arrested suspects. And the D.A.'s office under Rufus Seth Williams wouldn't prosecute, no matter how brutal the crime.
But then, in an abrupt about-face, Deputy District Attorney Michael Barry, the head of the D.A.'s charging unit, sent an email to the cops announcing that he was issuing a new policy directive to put his ADAs in the charging unit in a position where they would "feel more comfortable charging difficult cases."
"More comfortable?" she said. "That is our job. If you're not comfortable" charging a suspect in a domestic violence case, she said, "You should not be a district attorney."
"Domestic violence is one of the most serious crises that we face," she said. "If this was done to improve stats for reelection purposes he [D.A. Williams] has destroyed what it means to be district attorney."
If elected, her goal would be "regaining the public's trust," she said. In the 160 year history of the Philadelphia D.A.s's office, she said, there has never been a D.A. who got indicted. Until Seth Williams came along.Morale in that office is in the tank," she said. "They need a proper leader, someone who respects what they do. And Mr. Krasner does not."
Nine people were shot this weekend alone in Philadelphia, Grossman said. The victims included a one-year-old outside on a porch.
"My fear is that he [Krasner] will not embrace what it means to be a prosecutor," Grossman said. "I don't understand how you can change your mindset after being a defense attorney" for so many years.