Larry Krasner

In a Feb. 24 order, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to appoint a special master to probe into whether the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office is conflicted out of handling the appeal of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal because of work District Attorney Larry Krasner and others in the office previously did in support of Abu-Jamal.

But while the rare grant of a King's Bench petition filed by Maureen Faulkner, the widow of slain police officer Daniel Faulkner, was significant, the second sentence of the order, denying the District Attorney's Office's attempt to withdraw an exhibit from its response to the petition, quietly highlighted what may prove to be an important aspect of the dispute.

The exhibit in question is a web page under the "About Us" section of the district attorney's website, which currently lists Assistant District Attorney Paul George as assistant supervisor of the Law Division.

Among the office's alleged conflicts of interest Faulkner and her attorneys at Bochetto & Lentz raise in their King's Bench petition is that George, who in private practice represented Abu-Jamal on appeal, now oversees ADA Grady Gervino, the Appeals Unit prosecutor who is currently handling Abu-Jamal's case.

But in its Dec. 2 response to Faulkner's petition, Krasner's office denied that George oversaw the office's appellate lawyers and attached the "About Us" web page as an exhibit in support of its argument.

"As a simple review of the District Attorney's Office's public website or any of the hundreds of appellate briefs the office has filed in this court or the Superior Court since January 2018 shows (and would have shown Mrs. Faulkner's lawyers), Mr. George is not the 'head of the Appellate Unit,' or the 'chief of the Appeals Unit,' of the District Attorney's Office," the office said in the filing, which was submitted by Gervino, Krasner and attorney Lawrence J. Goode, along with Law Division supervisor Nancy Winkelman and First Assistant District Attorney Carolyn Engel Temin. "Rather, Lawrence J. Goode, Esquire, is the head of the Appeals Unit. He has served in that role since the first week of the current district attorney's administration (before that time, Mr. Goode served as the long-term assistant chief of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office's Appeals Unit).

"It is thus Mr. Goode, and not Mr. George, who is the assigned prosecutor's 'immediate supervisor,'" the response continued.

However, the following day, Krasner's office filed an application to withdraw the web page as an exhibit, saying that after submitting the filing, Gervino "realized that the webpage was updated after petitioner filed her King's Bench petition, although at the time she filed her petition, and prior thereto, it correctly stated, as it does now, that Mr. Goode is the supervisor of the Appeals Unit."

The web page did not, however, list George as assistant supervisor of the Law Division or give any indication of his role in supervising the Appeals Unit at the time Faulkner filed her petition.

"Thus, while the District Attorney's Office's statement that a review of the webpage would have shown petitioner's attorneys that Mr. Goode, and not Mr. George, is the head of the Appeals Unit is accurate, it realizes it erred in including Exhibit C as part of its response, since that version of the page did not exist at the time petitioner filed her King's Bench petition," Gervino wrote.

But in an answer to the District Attorney's Office's application to withdraw the exhibit, Faulkner's attorneys seized on the altered web page as being "emblematic of the district attorney's entire response: it is full of inaccurate and incomplete statements."

Krasner's office's claim that a review of its website would have shown that George is not the immediate supervisor of the ADA handling Abu-Jamal's appeal "is false for at least two reasons," Faulkner's lawyers said.

"First, George's title as 'assistant supervisor' of the Law Division was not listed on the office website until after the King's Bench petition was filed," Faulkner's attorneys wrote. "In fact, prior to the website being updated after petitioner filed her King's Bench petition, the only public indication of George's role at the office was the appearance of his name on filed pleadings. In those pleadings, he appears as a direct supervisor to attorneys underneath him in the hierarchy of the office, including attorneys in the Appeals Unit. Indeed, as recently as July 2019, it is Paul George, not Lawrence J. Goode, who is listed on an appellate brief filed with this court as a superior to Grady Gervino—the same ADA currently assigned to the Mumia Abu-Jamal appeal pending in the Superior Court. Neither George's affidavit nor the district attorney's response explains these facts to the court."

Second, Faulkner's lawyers argued, the fact George is the assistant supervisor of the Law Division means he actually has more authority over Gervino than even Goode does.

"In other words, George does not directly supervise the assistants in the Appeals Unit, he supervises their supervisor," Faulkner's attorneys wrote.

What impact the web page will ultimately play in the Supreme Court's decision on Faulkner's petition remains to be seen, but Faulkner's attorney George Bochetto said the fact that the court refused to allow the exhibit to be withdrawn in significant.

For now, the next step in the process is for the justices to appoint the special master, who will investigate Faulkner's claims and make recommendations to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, per the high court's order granting the King's Bench petition, all matters related to Abu-Jamal's underlying criminal appeal are stayed until further notice.

"This is obviously an historic development and it goes to the very heart of what Larry Krasner is doing as district attorney and whether he is fulfilling his oath of office," Bochetto said. "In the Faulkner case, he is distinctly not fulfilling his oath of office and I think the Supreme Court is going to call him on out on it."

A spokesperson for Krasner's office declined to comment beyond the office's filings.