That the new Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh Shapiro, does not place all the blame for the dysfunctional office he inherited on former Attorney General Kathleen Kane. She was in over her head, which caused her to make a lot of mistakes; however, many of the problems that occurred during her administration were the result of her predecessors and many of the staff members she inherited. This includes the group of prosecutors who made a continuing practice of sending pornographic photos and racial/ethnic jokes to judges they appeared before.
• That Attorney General Josh Shapiro releases the names of the prosecutors who sent and the trial judges and supervising grand jury judges who received ex parte emails from them in the porngate scandal. The defense counsel in those cases are entitled to know that there was a less-than-arms-length relationship between the grand jury and trial judges and the prosecutors. Such communications indicate a compromise of the judiciary by the executive branch. The decision made by his interim predecessor, Bruce Beemer, to decline to release the names of the judges and prosecutors should not be a binding precedent. Shapiro should not be bound by a major policy decision made by a five-month temporary attorney general, which will saddle him with problems in criminal cases and his relationship with the courts for years. This decision appears to uphold the time-honored practice of lawyers protecting lawyers.
