{"id":277128,"date":"2026-09-02T06:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T06:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/277128\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T06:52:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T06:52:13","slug":"2-more-philly-dao-lawyers-testify-in-federal-hearing-over-how-2009-murder-appeal-was-handled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/277128\/","title":{"rendered":"2 more Philly DAO lawyers testify in federal hearing over how 2009 murder appeal was handled"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Testimony wrapped Tuesday in the federal court hearing over how lawyers for the Philadelphia District Attorney\u2019s Office handled, or mishandled, an appeal in a nearly two-decade-old murder case.<\/p>\n

The appeal involved Dennis Johnson, who was convicted in 2009 of killing Kenyatta Smith at a Strawberry Mansion convenience store.<\/p>\n

Attorneys David Napiorski and Peter Andrews echoed what their colleagues said last week<\/a>: that when they realized errors were made in a 2022 court filing siding with the defendant, they tried to push District Attorney Larry Krasner to send the case to the Pennsylvania Attorney General\u2019s office. <\/p>\n

They all said Krasner repeatedly refused, calling the attorney general\u2019s office evil and said they should malign Jaclyn Mason<\/a>, the lawyer who filed the concession, in an effort to \u201cprotect the office.\u201d Napiorski said Krasner also threatened their jobs if they didn\u2019t comply. <\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s father Roy Clark said this has all been a distraction from his son\u2019s case. \u201cTo me with the DA\u2019s office in-house fighting, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s the remedy for that,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have been sitting in there and waiting for the meat and potatoes of the issue, because that is my son, and right now, they are going on with things about who messed up the brief and who did what with the filing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In testimony last week, Krasner was accused of calling the AG\u2019s office \u201cParaguay\u201d and the attorneys who work there \u201cNazis.\u201d <\/p>\n

Judge Paul Diamond will now decide whether there was misconduct in the handling of the appeal, and whether the DA\u2019s office should still have a hand in the case.<\/p>\n

Krasner has been under fire by both federal judges and the state Supreme Court for his office\u2019s handling of overturning convictions. A prior supervisor in his office was disbarred for similar conduct by the federal court, while another was suspended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Testimony wrapped Tuesday in the federal court hearing over how lawyers for the Philadelphia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[31,336,69,71,70,91374],"class_list":["post-277128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-crime","tag-larry-krasner","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-district-attorney-s-office"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}