Soros-Backed Philly DA Larry Krasner Gets Slapped by Pennsylvania Supreme Court
“The ruling stops short of handing control of the cases to the state attorney general, but it creates a new court-ordered check on Krasner’s office in future post-conviction matters.”
Larry Krasner is the far-left Philadelphia district attorney who is constantly trying to free actual criminals while vowing to arrest and prosecute ICE agents for doing their jobs.
This week, Krasner got a serious wake-up call from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which accused him of misrepresenting the facts in certain cases and imposed an embarrassing condition on his office as a result.
FOX News reports:
Dem justices slap Soros-backed Philly DA with power strip in stunning decision: ‘Not reliable’
A divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court, including two Democrat justices, ordered Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office to face new outside scrutiny over its post-conviction concessions after the state’s high court found the office’s handling of one convicted murderer’s case was unreliable and said similar problems extended beyond just that single case.
Justice Kevin Dougherty, a Democrat, wrote the 4-3 opinion in the case of Levar Brown, a Philadelphia man whose murder convictions became the centerpiece of a broader legal fight over Krasner’s Conviction Integrity Unit and the office’s willingness to concede relief in serious criminal cases. Dougherty was joined by Justice Daniel McCaffery, another Democrat judge on the state’s Supreme Court, and two other Republican judges. The dissenters were all Democrats.
The 4-3 decision reversed a Philadelphia post-conviction order granting Brown a new trial after Krasner’s office conceded his conviction should not stand and a Philadelphia judge approved the request. It also ordered that, going forward, Philadelphia judges handling post-conviction challenges must notify the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General and allow the office to intervene before granting relief in any case where Krasner’s office concedes that a conviction should be overturned.
The ruling stops short of handing control of the cases to the state attorney general, but it creates a new court-ordered check on Krasner’s office in future post-conviction matters.
Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University notes Krasner’s reaction to this at The Hill:
In response, Krasner did what he always does: He suggested that the criticism furthered racism and threatened democracy. He declared that the criticism of his office “undermines the value of a vote in Philadelphia” and defended his staff as merely furthering the work of racial justice: “On the eve of Juneteenth, we should all remember that reform is necessary in every era. And that those who bring needed reform sometimes are made to pay a price.”
This is vintage Krasner. His office was found to be both dishonest and negligent, but the district attorney cites his own misconduct as proof that his office is fighting hard for racial justice.
It did not matter that in 2021 a court admonished Krasner for creating what amounted to an unconstitutional blacklist of police officers whom he would not call as witnesses, even if their testimony was required to convict a criminal.
It did not matter that Krasner was admonished by a state Supreme Court justice in 2022 for abusing the grand jury process in an unhinged effort to charge a police officer with a crime.
Krasner feeds a rage addiction with uncut, pure criminal justice crack. It is a formula that has served him well with the media and the voters. Like Atlanta’s Fani Willis, he actually turns court sanctions into a badge of honor with voters who distrust the police and the criminal justice system.
Krasner’s approach to criminal justice is typically progressive.
Perhaps the people who want to abolish prisons should not be in charge of prosecuting criminals.
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Comments
Good
And “Far Left” description is being nice to him
If ever some motherfu*ker needed the tar and feathers….
When a DA’s conduct invokes criticism and oversight even from Dhimmi-crat judges, you know that he/she has really crossed the lines of ethical and professional propriety.
Krasner is a disgrace, and his misconduct quiet honestly represents grounds for referral for state Bar discipline and disbarment.
I first read the last word of your second paragraph as dismemberment. That would be an appropriate punishment for his conduct!
Drawing and quartering would be a good start.
I always wondered if under his name on his business card, does it simply read “Communist POS”?
Slapped?
That’s a very large understatement.
The decision is a beat down of epic proportions.
And well deserved.
(As a side note, it is nice to see judges follow the actual law instead of party affiliations. All judges should be like that.)
“Dem justices slap Soros-backed Philly DA with power strip”
Except here’s the image that headline described to me…
“Krasner’s approach to criminal justice is typically ‘progressive'”-Democrat, a brainless red liberal Democrat.
The biggest shocker here is that there are apparently two Democrats left in the country with a shred of integrity.
One can only hope that Krasner reaps the harvest of what he sows, and no one else does.
Could someone explain to me how an DA can concede that a conviction should be vacated? If he has insufficient evidence to get a conviction, the case shouldn’t be tried. Or does he intentionally bungle cases, expecting the jurors to return a “not guilty,” but sometimes the jurors don’t get the memo?
He didn’t prosecute these cases. Had they come up in his time he would have exercised his legal discretion not to prosecute them. But he wasn’t the DA at the time they were prosecuted, so it wasn’t up to him. Now the criminals are challenging their convictions, and rather than fight them he’s helping them by refusing to put up a case against them. The criminal goes to court and says the case against him was flawed, and Krasner goes to court and agrees with that claim, and expects the court to say “Oh, well, I guess it was flawed, so the conviction must be overturned”.
The thing is that he doesn’t have discretion over those prosecutions; the DA of the time did.
He perpetuated a fraud on the court. That’s what the rebuke was for and the reason his office is now overseen by the State AG. The truth is that every Philly DA office lawyer, including Krasner, should be disbarred. The only way to stop this behavior is to bring the hammer down hard. Really hard. With real consequences comes obedience to the law and not political /social outcomes.
Larry Krasner was elected by voters. They deserve what they get. Good and Hard.
Yes, but the current voters aren’t entitled to have past valid convictions overturned.
Krasner’s case here, such as it is, rests on the principle of prosecutorial discretion. He’s saying that the people of Philadelphia, like those in all counties, have the right to elect the DA of their choosing, and if they like one who uses his discretion to refuse to prosecute criminals that is their right. To override his discretion is to deprive the voters of the right to elect such a DA, and thus makes their votes less valuable than those of voters in every other county, who can elect a DA with policies they like.
When it comes to bringing prosecutions he’s unfortunately right. Restricting his prosecutorial discretion would likely require an amendment to the state constitution, and would by definition be a restraint on the voters’ ability to elect officials who will give them the policies they want.
But here we’re not talking about bringing prosecutions. We’re talking about people who’ve already been prosecuted and convicted, by previous DAs who were elected by the voters of their time, and who did their duties to those voters by prosecuting these criminals. Now he comes along to undo those convictions, and he has no discretion over that. He can’t just get a conviction overturned because he wouldn’t have brought the prosecution in the first place. It’s the prisoner’s job to challenge the conviction, and he has the duty to zealously defend the conviction to the best of his ability. He has no discretion to hide incriminating evidence just because he wouldn’t have used it himself.
I guess Krasner has at least one fan here, who thinks he does have the right to overturn any conviction for a crime that he wouldn’t have prosecuted.
Branca:
https://www.youtube.com/live/l9Celjo4N-0?si=blC5gIuuZLNGbOWn