Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania Attorney General\u2019s Office has entered the legal fight over whether Lavar Brown \u2014 the man whose case prompted the state Supreme Court to give the office new power<\/a> to challenge efforts to overturn convictions in Philadelphia \u2014 should receive a new trial. <\/p>\n Senior Deputy Attorney General Tracy Piatkowski announced the office was stepping in during a Common Pleas Court hearing Friday, at which Brown\u2019s attorney, Tracy Ulstad, also said she planned to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state court\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n Brown, 49, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury convicted him of second-degree murder in the 2003 robbery and fatal shooting of Michael Richardson, a worker at a Rite Aid<\/a> drugstore in North Philadelphia<\/a>. Brown was also convicted of killing Robert Crawford in 2005 and sentenced to death.<\/p>\n In the Richardson case, a judge later vacated Brown\u2019s sentence and ordered a new trial, after District Attorney Larry Krasner\u2019s office supported his request <\/a>. Brown\u2019s attorneys argued that he had been denied a fair trial because the prosecution\u2019s case relied heavily on two witnesses, one of whom had implicated another person in the killing in earlier statements that were never provided to his trial attorneys.<\/p>\n