PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — In an extraordinary ruling from Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, if the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office wants to overturn a conviction in state court, the state Attorney General’s office must be given the chance to review the case and make sure a proper investigation was done.
The order comes as a King's Bench petition, which is basically a mechanism for the high court to take over a case and review it. The case at hand involved Lavar Brown, a man convicted of killing two men in the early 2000s and sentenced to death row.
In their opinion, the five Democratic and two Republican justices said District Attorney Larry Krasner has “numerous instances of untrustworthy concessions, lack of candor, misrepresentations of fact, lack of adequate investigation, and avoidance of hearings” and is “unreliable.”
They said when a district attorney fails to follow through on their duties it “does not minister justice, it facilitates injustice.”
The high court said because “the problems are poised to continue,” it’s now requiring the Attorney General to intervene on behalf of the commonwealth.
“It is only in Philadelphia County that there has been a pronounced, documented pattern of highly problematic prosecutorial concessions,” the judges added.
In a video posted on the District Attorney's Office YouTube channel, Krasner decried the high court's decision.
“Does that help democracy? No. It actually undermines the value of a vote in Philadelphia as compared to every other county,” he said.
“Does it help with safety? We've already seen that there being integrity in the system and correcting the mistakes of the past builds trust, makes people more willing to go to court, to testify, to contact the police.”
