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| Our New D.A. Loves To Cuddle Up To Criminals |
for BigTrial.net
Today, at the request of the D.A.'s office, a judge let a convicted murderer go free. Along the way, the D.A. gratuitously smeared the reputation of a former prosecutor who hadn't even been formally accused of misconduct.
It was all in a day's work for Progressive Larry Krasner, the new D.A. financed by $1.6 million of George Soros's money who's making good on his campaign promise to turn the D.A.'s office upside down.
Richard Sax, the former prosecutor targeted in court by Krasner, said afterwards that he applauded the new D.A. for being that "rare breed of politician" who keeps his campaign promises. Sadly, Sax said, the campaign promise that Krasner is keeping involves "emptying the jails."
"I just didn't think he [Krasner] would include murderers," Sax said.
Call him the Great Emancipator.
As a defense attorney, Krasner talked former D.A. Rufus Seth Williams, now in a federal prison serving four years for political corruption, into setting free more than 800 convicted drug dealers arrested by former members of the city police department's Narcotics Field Unit South. The drug dealers were set free even though the D.A.'s office on two occasions had to subsequently admit in court that it possessed absolutely no evidence of any misconduct by those narcotics officers.
On behalf of Newsweek, I was able to track the records of about 400 of those newly emancipated drug dealers. More than 200 were subsequently arrested on charges that included rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with a gun, attempted murder, and murder. People like Jason Sidiero, who, less than a year after he was released, in 2015, was charged with murder after he allegedly shot to death Michael Walsh.
As D.A., Krasner has already given rapper Meek Mill a pass. Today in court, Common Pleas Court Judge Kathryn Streeter Lewis granted a motion filed by the D.A.'s office to overturn the murder conviction of Dontia Patterson, who was serving a life sentence, because of what the D.A. claimed was "an egregious example of police and prosecutorial misconduct."
Patterson was convicted in 2009 of the murder two years earlier of Antwine Johnson, 18, outside a corner store on Granite Street, after two eyewitnesses testified against the defendant. In a motion to dismiss the charges, the D.A.'s office argued that the prosecutors were "completely lacking in integrity" because they supposedly did not disclose evidence about another possible suspect in the murder of Johnson, a man who himself ound up being murdered a few months after Johnson's murder.
But the D.A. was improvising. No allegation of prosecutorial misconduct had been made during the appeal of Patterson's conviction. Instead, the alleged grounds for throwing out the charges rested on the claimed ineffectiveness of Patterson's defense lawyer. It was the D.A.'s office under Krasner that decided to introduce the allegation that the prosecutors had hid evidence that might have exonerated Patterson.
Former prosecutor Sax dismissed the D.A.'s new allegations as "nonsense."
"Every single piece of possible exculpatory evidence was turned over," Sax insisted. "I've done that for 37 years." Of the hundreds of murder cases he successfully prosecuted during his career, Sax said, not one conviction was ever reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct.
There's one other problem with the overturning of the Patterson case; for more than a year, Crasser has been engaged in a noisy public feud with Sax. That feud culminated in a confrontation last week, when Krasner, surrounded by four to six members of his security detail, pounded on a door on the 18th floor of the D.A.'s office and verbally attacked Sax, who was inside, for allegedly trespassing.
At the time, however, Sax was there at the request of Patrick Blessington, an assistant district attorney under Krasner, who was prepping Sax to testify at another appeals hearing in another murder case that Sax originally prosecuted. Days later after that confrontation, Krasner's minions were smearing Sax in court for alleged misconduct.
"There was not even a claim of prosecutorial misconduct for the D.A.'s office to address," Sax said. "It [the appeal] was sent back for ineffective counsel."
The only way for the D.A. to lodge a claim of prosecutorial misconduct against him, Sax said, was for Krasner to personally order his subordinates to make one up.
Ben Waxman, a spokesman for Krasner, did not respond to a request for comment.
As far as Sax is concerned, the D.A. has a vendetta against him.
"It feels that way to me," Sax said. The investigation into Patterson's appeal was done "so quickly," Sax said. Patterson was released on bail and held on house arrest in March, after Krasner had only been in office for three months.
"The case was in litigation for 12 years," Sax said. Patterson was convicted by a jury, and the case was upheld on appeal by the state Superior Court. There were no allegations of prosecutorial misconduct on appeal.
Sax said he was the victim of an "unfair and unjust attack in a case where a man convicted of murder is now being set free."
Richard Glazer of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project had advocated for years that Patterson was an innocent man, Sax said. Then, Glazer became one of Krasner's "inner circle," Sax said. From then on, Sax claims, the fix was in.
"Larry Krasner didn't need an investigation," Sax contended. The case was so poorly investigated that detectives were unable to contact any member of the murder victim's family, to inform them that the D.A. was about to let the convicted killer of their loved one free. As a result, no member of the victim's family attended today's court hearing.
At the hearing, Anthony Voci, chief of the new D.A.'s homicide unit, quoted the Declaration of Independence and asserted that prosecutors had to ensure that no one is improperly denied the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
If the D.A.'s office is sincerely interested in overturning cases where prosecutorial misconduct has been committed, they ought to be aborting the planned retrial of Msgr. William J. Lynn.
Lynn, the Archdiocese's former secretary for clergy, was convicted in 2012 of one count of endangering the welfare of a child for allegedly placing a former altar boy known as "Billy Doe" in harm's way of a known abuser priest, Ed Avery.
But Gallagher has subsequently been revealed to be a liar in a case overflowing with prosecutorial misconduct.
Former Detective Joe Walsh has come forward to state in an affidavit that Billy Doe, whose real name is Danny Gallagher, admitted to the detective that he had made up his stories of abuse after Walsh caught Gallagher in one lie after another.
After a hearing in Common Pleas Court, Judge Gwendolyn Bright found the D.A.'s office had committed prosecutorial misconduct serious enough to warrant a new trial for Msgr. Lynn. So if the D.A. was seeking justice in the Lynn case, there would be no need to have to make up any new allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
In his affidavit, Detective Walsh also disclosed that he repeatedly questioned Gallagher about discrepancies in his many tales of abuse, and that Gallagher's evasive answers and new stories of abuse were never divulged to defense lawyers.
In his affidavit, Walsh also stated that after he repeatedly warned Mariana Sorensen, the lead prosecutor in the case, that his investigation had determined that Gallagher wasn't telling the truth, Sorensen replied, "You're killing my case."
And here's the capper. For the past eight years, ADA Sorensen, as well as two other assistant D.A.s, have testified in three different courtrooms that Sorensen took no notes when she initially interviewed Gallagher back in 2010, shortly after a detective bailed Gallagher out of jail.
And then, eight years, later, seven pages of Sorensen's notes have mysteriously reappeared. Holy Declaration of Independence!
Talk about an egregious example of prosecutorial misconduct, complete with evidence backing that up, Walsh's affidavit, and Sorensen's long-lost notes.
But the D.A.'s office under Progressive Larry Krasner is proceeding full speed ahead with a planned retrial of Msgr. Lynn, who has already served 33 months of his 36-month sentence, plus 18 months of house arrest.
Because Larry Krasner's sense of outrage over prosecutorial misconduct does not extend to Roman Catholic priests falsely accused.
Waxman, the D.A.'s spokesman, was hiding under his desk and unable to respond to a request for comment about prosecutorial misconduct in the Lynn case.