PHILADELPHIA (AP) \u2014 A federal judge referred Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday for investigation into whether he broke the law while overseeing a post-conviction case.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond disqualified Krasner and Assistant DA Matthew Stiegler from participating in the case involving Dennis Johnson, who is seeking to have his second-degree murder conviction overturned.<\/p>\n
Diamond also took the unusual step of recommending that the DOJ investigate whether Krasner committed any crimes, including perjury and obstruction of justice, according to court documents.<\/p>\n
In a memorandum referring the matter for \u201cinvestigation and other appropriate action\u201d the judge said \u201ctroubling\u201d activity by Krasner and Stiegler was uncovered during recent evidentiary hearings into how the DA\u2019s office handled the Johnson case.<\/p>\n
That included allegedly pressuring staffers to lie to Diamond in court and threatening \u201cconsequences\u201d for those who did not follow Krasner\u2019s orders, the judge wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have thus reluctantly concluded that Philadelphia\u2019s highest law enforcement official and one of his top assistants may have violated the law,\u201d Diamond said.<\/p>\n
Krasner said in a statement that he \u201crespectfully and vigorously\u201d disagrees with the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look forward to appealing to the higher court as soon as the law allows,\u201d Krasner said, adding that he could not comment further because the case is pending.<\/p>\n
Stiegler did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania also did not immediately reply to inquiries seeking details about the potential investigation.<\/p>\n
Johnson was convicted in 2009 of killing Kenyatta Smith. In 2022 the DA\u2019s office made a court filing stating that Johnson was entitled to habeas relief based on ineffective assistance of counsel.<\/p>\n
Court documents show that DA employees told Krasner the case should be directed to the Pennsylvania Attorney General\u2019s Office due to potential conflicts of interest involving Stiegler. Krasner opposed the move, saying he needed to stay involved to \u201cprotect the office,\u201d according to the documents.<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s petition remains on hold. Diamond said the DA\u2019s office could continue to handle the case moving forward, but it is not immediately clear which prosecutor might take it on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (AP) \u2014 A federal judge referred Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to the U.S. Department of Justice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[336,119437,69,6777,71,70],"class_list":["post-286919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-larry-krasner","tag-matthew-stiegler","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-district-attorney","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286919","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=286919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}