Pa. High Court Rejects Ex-AG Kane's Criminal Appeal
Kathleen Kane was found guilty more than two years ago, but will now begin to serve her jail sentence.
November 26, 2018 at 05:56 PM
3 minute read
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has denied former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane's bid for an appeal in her criminal case, finalizing a lower appellate court's decision to affirm her conviction on perjury and related charges.
In an order filed Monday afternoon, the court denied Kane's petition for allowance of appeal. Kane resigned from her post shortly after she was convicted in August 2016, but continued to fight the result. It has now been over two years since Kane was sentenced to 10 to 23 months in jail, but she will only now start serving her sentence.
Kane's attorney, Joshua Lock, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday.
In a published opinion in May, a three-judge Superior Court panel unanimously upheld Kane's conviction. A Montgomery County jury found her guilty of intentionally leaking confidential investigative information to smear a rival, then lying about her actions under oath.
Kane was released on $75,000 cash bail for the duration of the appeals process. The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office filed a motion to revoke bail Tuesday afternoon, and Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy filed an order Tuesday afternoon, stating that Kane must report to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility by 9 a.m. Thursday.
Kane argued several points on appeal, including that all of the judges in Montgomery County should have recused themselves from the bench during her case—alleging they had connections to the grand jury investigation of her conduct—and that prosecutors used vindictive tactics to secure her conviction.
The Superior Court rejected each of her arguments.
“The mere fact that some judges of a particular court may have some familiarity with a particular case has not been held to be a basis for recusal of an entire bench of judges,” Judge Anne Lazarus wrote in the court's opinion. Additionally, there was no evidence of a vindictive prosecution, Lazarus said.
Kane's slow-motion fall from grace began with the revelation in 2014 that she had shut down a political corruption investigation that eventually resulted in a series of guilty pleas in a prosecution revived by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. It continued as Kane—as the jury found—broke the law in the process of seeking revenge on Frank Fina, the former prosecutor she believed let loose the information to the media that led to her public embarrassment.
In addition to criminal charges, Kane faced a series of lawsuits filed by employees and former employees of the Office of Attorney General. Earlier this month, the OAG agreed to settle a case brought by two agents who had alleged that Kane retaliated against them and tried to damage their reputations after they testified before a grand jury about an OAG investigation Kane shut down, paying $75,000 to the two agents, Michael Carlson and Michael Cranga.
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