{"id":223382,"date":"2026-06-19T19:49:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/223382\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T19:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:49:17","slug":"larry-krasner-tried-to-free-a-convicted-murderer-the-pennsylvania-supreme-court-just-stopped-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/223382\/","title":{"rendered":"Larry Krasner Tried to Free a Convicted Murderer. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Just Stopped Him."},"content":{"rendered":"

Philadelphia\u2019s recalcitrant District Attorney Larry Krasner is back in the news this week, thanks to an extraordinary ruling<\/a> by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Invoking what\u2019s known as \u201cKing\u2019s bench jurisdiction<\/a>\u201d\u2014which allows the state\u2019s high court to assume jurisdiction over a case at any stage when it involves a matter of extraordinary public importance\u2014the justices reversed a lower court decision to grant a new trial to a convicted murderer under the state\u2019s Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA). The high court held that the record did not support a new trial, despite Krasner\u2019s office conceding in the courtroom that the defendant was entitled to such relief.<\/p>\n

Courts generally defer to such concessions by a prosecutor\u2019s office, so it is striking that Pennsylvania\u2019s Supreme Court would disregard that concession and overturn the granting of a new trial. But the decision makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n

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For starters, Krasner\u2019s office has a curious habit of conceding relief, according to the court. This matters, because when the prosecution concedes relief, the reviewing court loses out on the benefits that stem from zealous advocacy in an adversarial process.<\/p>\n

Prosecutorial concessions can also shield important evidence from judicial consideration\u2014and that may very well be the point for Krasner. The court stated that the DA\u2019s concession wasn\u2019t just wrong in the case at hand, but that it was \u201cnot reliable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the most brilliant lawyers can make legal errors, but the court\u2019s findings suggest that Krasner\u2019s concessions\u2014even the unwarranted ones\u2014are not the result of mistakes. In a scathing opinion, the court found that Krasner\u2019s office \u201cviolated its duty of candor to the PCRA court, withheld material evidence from the court, opposed efforts by amici to gain access to this evidence, submitted a false stipulation of fact, misstated facts in its pleadings, failed to conduct a reasonable investigation, and opposed a required evidentiary hearing\u201d (emphasis mine).<\/p>\n

So \u201cnumerous\u201d are these \u201cinstances of untrustworthy concessions, lack of candor, misrepresentations of fact, lack of adequate investigation, and avoidance of hearings\u201d that the court also ruled that in future cases in which Krasner\u2019s office concedes relief, the reviewing court \u201cshall grant the Office of Attorney General (OAG) notice and the right to intervene in the case before ruling on the concession.\u201d<\/p>\n

Readers may be wondering why a prosecutor would go this far out of his way to help a convicted murderer. The most plausible answer: ideology. Larry Krasner subscribes (sincerely, one suspects) to a \u201csocial justice\u201d view that elevates the concerns of perpetrators over those of victims. He comes from a school of thought that sees the enforcement mechanisms of the criminal justice system as inherently oppressive and reflective of society\u2019s failures to prevent lawbreaking by making society more equitable.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, New York City congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier articulated this social justice view during a debate hosted by NY1<\/a>. Per Chevalier, government should spend public money on solutions \u201cthat actually bring real safety to our communities\u201d rather than policing and incarceration. What kind of solutions? \u201c[F]unding the programs that are actually correlated with an increased sense of safety,\u201d she said, without (naturally) specifying any.<\/p>\n

In a video<\/a> released in response to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court\u2019s decision, Krasner was defiant. Accusing the court of acting out of fear of \u201creform,\u201d he likened his critics to opponents of Martin Luther King Jr., whose portrait Krasner stood in front of while delivering his response. The DA went on to take credit for the recent reductions in Philadelphia homicides, without providing a shred of evidence to support that suggestion.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the truth that people like Krasner and Chevalier are afraid the public will learn: policing, prosecution, and incarceration are unmatched in terms of their proven (by rigorous<\/a> empirical<\/a> evidence<\/a>) ability to significantly<\/a> reduce<\/a> crime<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The \u201cabolitionists\u201d and \u201creformers\u201d want you to believe they have somehow derived solutions to problems\u2014like poverty, inequality, predation, greed, and violence\u2014that have been present in every society throughout history. The hubris of this view cannot be overstated. Nor can one overemphasize how thoroughly the evidence disproves it<\/a>. New York City, for example, saw homicides fall by 87 percent<\/a> between 1990\u20132017. Gotham didn\u2019t solve poverty or reduce economic inequality. Nor did it reduce crime through some jobs program. In fact, the city continued to cut homicides during the Great Recession, when the unemployment rate nearly doubled.<\/p>\n

Krasner and his comrades may be comfortable abandoning proven approaches to pursue their misguided ideas about justice. The bad news is that, as public officeholders, they\u2019re in an excellent position to do that. The good news is that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just took an important step to check their ideologically motivated folly. Here\u2019s hoping the rest of the country takes notice.<\/p>\n

Rafael A. Mangual<\/a> is the Nick Ohnell Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of the 2022 book, Criminal (In)Justice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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