PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A former top official within the District Attorney\u2019s Office has been suspended from practicing in Federal court for three years after she was accused of lying to a judge to overturn a death penalty sentence. <\/p>\n
The Federal court unsealed the order to suspend Nancy Winkelman, a former supervisor of the District Attorney\u2019s Law Division, earlier this week. <\/p>\n
A panel of three judges agreed the longtime attorney should be suspended because they said she \u201cmisrepresented critical facts\u201d to vacate a defendant\u2019s sentence. <\/p>\n
The decision comes several months after her subordinate Paul George<\/a> was disbarred from Federal court for the same reason, and the same case: Robert Wharton<\/a>, who was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering a Mount Airy couple in the 1980s, and leaving their baby daughter to freeze to death. The baby was rescued and survived. <\/p>\n After exhausting all other appeals at the state level, Wharton turned to the Federal court to vacate his sentence, and the District Attorney\u2019s Office sided with him.<\/p>\n The judges said George didn\u2019t investigate or properly vet the case before siding with the defendant and didn\u2019t notify the family. They said Winkelman didn\u2019t review any of what was presented to the judge, but signed off on it anyway. <\/p>\n In a report, the judges wrote, \u201cWe further find that she was willfully blind to, and complicit in, George\u2019s misrepresentations\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n