PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has filed his response to impeachment charges, less than one month before his trial is scheduled to start in the Pennsylvania Senate.
In his written response, Krasner said the Senate cannot convict and remove him, for several reasons. Most significantly, he said, the charges in the articles of impeachment do not constitute “misbehavior in office” as described in the Pennsylvania Constitution.
“Certain members of the Pennsylvania legislature may disagree with the ideas and policies of the District Attorney. But the citizens of Philadelphia elected him,” Krasner wrote.
“Those disagreements cannot serve as the basis for an unprecedented action in this state: impeachment for ideas and policies.”
All seven articles of impeachment adopted by the Senate allege misbehavior in office.
Krasner is accused of:
— Dereliction of duty.
— Obstruction of the legislative committee formed to investigate his office.
— Providing misleading or incomplete information while seeking to overturn a death sentence.
— Violating professional standards in the case against Ryan Pownall.
— Failure to disclose a conflict of interest in the Mumia Abu-Jamal case when he was a defense attorney.
— Violations of crime victims’ rights.
— Misuse of prosecutorial discretion.
Krasner says the allegations are a combination of incomplete anecdotes and statistics that criticize his exercise of prosecutorial discretion in an attempt to show his policies have caused an increase of violence in the city. However, he said, they do not rise to the level of misbehavior in office.
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“Those who voted for impeachment in the House latched onto a serious subject — gun violence — with an unserious, unconstitutional, and anti-democratic approach.”
Krasner is also fighting the impeachment in court. A Commonwealth Court hearing is set for Thursday, Dec. 29.
His trial in the Senate is scheduled to start Jan. 18.