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.
KYW Newsradio has reached out to the district attorney’s office and has not yet heard back.