Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
A Philadelphia judge has ordered a new trial for a former city police officer who was convicted of perjury, finding that one of the jurors on the case failed to disclose ties to a law firm representing the district attorney\u2019s office \u2014 an association she said deprived the officer of a fair trial.<\/p>\n
Daniel Levitt, 52, was found guilty of perjury<\/a> in June for lying under oath about how he recovered a gun during a 2021 traffic stop. But on Thursday, Common Pleas Court Judge Natasha Taylor-Smith vacated the conviction and ordered that Levitt be retried. <\/p>\n Her ruling centered on the jury foreman, a personal injury lawyer who did not disclose that his law firm was representing the Philadelphia District Attorney\u2019s Office in ongoing civil litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors.<\/p>\n The foreman\u2019s relationship to the law firm became public moments after the jury returned its verdict. Taylor-Smith questioned the jurors and concluded that the foreman\u2019s affiliation had not affected the verdict.<\/p>\n In a letter to the court earlier this month, Levitt\u2019s attorney, Coley Reynolds said he would have exercised a peremptory challenge to strike the juror had he known about the firm\u2019s work for the district attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Taylor-Smith reversed her earlier decision and granted Levitt a new trial.<\/p>\n Reynolds welcomed the ruling, saying, \u201cWe believe he did not get a fair trial.\u201d<\/p>\n District Attorney Larry Krasner<\/a> said Friday that his office would appeal the ruling and if necessary, retry the case.<\/p>\n Prosecutors said Levitt found an illegal firearm inside a bag that he did not have probable cause or a warrant to search during an April 2021 traffic stop. Then, they said, he lied about how he found it during the prosecution of the man he arrested. <\/p>\n Levitt, a 12-year veteran of the force, was the first officer charged after a department review raised concerns that some officers had conducted unlawful searches of people and vehicles before recovering guns. He was fired<\/a> following his arrest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min A Philadelphia judge has ordered a new trial for a former city police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,123343],"class_list":["post-298990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-police-officer-perjury-retrial-ordered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298990","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=298990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}