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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24388 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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After multiple hearings and extensive briefing, we find that Nancy Winkelman knowingly made misrepresentations to effectuate a policy of vacating all death sentences on appeal, at PCRA, or on federal habeas review.

Of the many cases that the CCRC considered, it invariably recommended that the DAO concede death penalty relief, usually on ineffectiveness grounds. Winkelman agreed with all these recommendations. As we explained in George, the DAO thus eventually conceded relief at post-trial as to all death penalties.

Remarkably, although George mentioned both the Circuit’s Remand Order and positive prison adjustment evidence, he failed to inform the CCRC of the Circuit’s direction to “reconstruct the record,” and mentioned none of the anti-mitigation evidence in Wharton’s prison record that the Circuit had explicitly ordered the Parties to reconsider. Yet, Winkelman did not question these glaring omissions, or the conclusion that Wharton’s prison record was “exemplary,” even though she knew from the Circuit’s Remand Order that his prison record contained significant anti-mitigation evidence and was not “exemplary.” Winkleman told us that she remembered nothing about the CCRC meeting at which Wharton was considered, except George’s failure to present anti-mitigation evidence and the CCRC’s decision. We do not credit that testimony.

After the OAG submitted its brief describing the anti-mitigation evidence the DAO had failed to disclose, Judge Goldberg held hearings on the matter, permitting the OAG to participate. Entering her appearance, Winkelman herself authored and signed a vigorous eight page “Objection” to the OAG’s participation as a “full-fledged adversarial party.” Winkelman repeated that the DAO decided to concede “after a thorough review” by the CCRC. Winkelman protested the OAG’s “in-depth factual investigation,” and its “highly aggressive, partisan stance."

Yet, in its Remand Order, the Third Circuit explicitly referred to Wharton’s “very serious misconducts,” and possession of a “confiscated weapon” while in prison. Given these explicit references in its Remand—an Order Winkelman acknowledged was unique in her experience—her denial that she knew about the anti-mitigation evidence necessarily was not true.

In her Answer to Putnam’s Petition, Winkelman argued that the Petition should be “dismissed with prejudice” and the Order to Show Cause “discharged.” . In support, Winkelman, inter alia, denied that the DAO had not misrepresented to Judge Goldberg respecting the CCRC’s review:

[P]rior to conceding relief, the CCRC conducted a careful review of the records concerning Wharton’s case, which included anti-mitigation evidence (but not the escape attempt).

This is not true. Winkelman and George testified before us that George’s presentation included no anti-mitigation evidence. George’s memo to the CCRC also included no reference to anti-mitigation evidence. Nor did it include the Circuit’s instruction to reconstruct the record to include anti-mitigation evidence.

George, related, has been left arguing :

As set forth in the Opening Brief, all of the Panel’s relevant findings werepredicated on its unsupported conclusion that the DAO had a “policy” of conceding error in every capital case and that Mr. George’s concession in this case was made pursuant to that policy. Op. Br. 27. Disciplinary Counsel alleged in the Petition for Rule to Show Cause that the DAO had a policy of conceding death penalty relief in every case, regardless of the merits of the case. App.492. The Panel agreed, stating that Mr. George conceded death penalty relief in all post-conviction and habeas matters, that he was “mendacious” because he adamantly denied the existence of such a concession policy and that he was the “architect” of the policy’s implementation. Yet in characterizing the record as “overwhelming,” Disciplinary Counsel fails to identify any evidence that such a policy existed other than providing the number of conceded capital cases, id. 33.]

I'm extremely confused. Did the convicted person commit the murders or not? Was the foostering about "okay, he dunnit, but we don't believe in the death penalty here so let's pretend everything was done wrongly so sentence can be changed to life imprisonment" or was it "yeah he didn't dunnit, we will pretend it was done wrongly because there isn't any other way to challenge this"?

Uh... there's a bunch of different ones, here.

Robert Wharton's homicide of Bradley and Ferne Hart, and near-killing of their infant childen, is the one that George and Winkelman got in hot water over. The evidence here is strong: Wharton confessed to killing Ferne shortly after the murders, he had a motive, he'd previously been caught threatening the couple (over his own shoddy work), he had a lot of property taken from the victim's home, and one of the people who was with him during the previous threats but not the murders said he admitted to the killing. The only serious current dispute is the penalty: George and Winkelman claim that he'd behaved well enough in custody before his sentence such that the defense's failure to raise the evidence was a serious fault requiring a new evaluation of the death penalty, and the victim's relatives were okay with a life sentence; the real story is that he'd been a sociopath in prison and that now-grown daughter who was very nearly a third homicide victim was never consulted.

That's probably why the court is so very direct in the one I linked to.

ToaKraka's link is about Lavar Brown, who had two separate homicide cases: the killing of Robert Crawford, and the robbery of Michael Richardson where the ringleader of the robbery killed Richardson. The Crawford case is straight-forward: a couple eyewitness saw Brown shoot Crawford multiple times, police caught him a little over a minute later, and he tried to ditch the gun while the police cornered him. Brown's lawyers have tried to get process relief under ineffective counsel, but it's pretty pretextual. The complicated part here is that the Crawford killing is pretty bog-standard gangland violence; Brown's many other serious convictions very likely put the death penalty on the table.

The Richardson one is the most iffy. Christopher Kennedy did the actual shooting; there's no serious debate about that, and since he's already been resentenced to life, the CIU probably won't try. There were allegedly five people in on the plan, and Brown was arrested a couple hours after the shooting with one of the people involved. Brown was convicted for felony murder as having planned and assisted the robbery, and since the plan itself involved at least shooting a security guard 'in the leg' and Crawford if he fought back, it's a pretty central example of what the felony murder law is there for. That's not a death penalty crime itself, but it's one in a long series that made the Crawford killing death-penalty eligible.

But there were no eyewitnesses or physical evidence, and Brown probably didn't enter the store himself during the robbery-turned-homicide. The big evidence was from other people involved in the crime, who were not exactly the most credible witnesses on top of also wanting to save their skins. The CIU claims that one, Vann, who was central to Brown's conviction, had previously also pointed fingers at a woman with the last name of Paige, who was in jail at the time, and that the police never turned that evidence undermining their already-shaky main witness over. That's a "done-wrongly" argument, but both combined would genuinely strike at the strength of the conviction.

It's also a somewhat-plausible one? Giglio incriminating statements are one of those things that prosecutors sometimes 'lose', or just don't write down in the first place. There's a specific e-mail from the Philadelphia DA's office that Krasner's been waving around saying that the police were just not writing down when a witness contradicted their testimony (page 36 on the pdf), and that's an overread, but it does say that they didn't write down or disclose every time a cooperating witness was flaky or inconsistent.

But it's not clear it's happened here enough to matter. The only evidence about Vann fingering Paige seems like it's pulling from an unrelated investigation that was on the same fax. The undisclosed material that's on record is just Vann's other information he'd provided in unrelated sources, which is arguably not Brady or Giglio. The stuff that's implied as undocumented is just a woman named Lyons having a proffer session where she placed Brown at the crime but minimized her own involvement -- and that's a situation where the only testimony and records are coming from a defense lawyer tied to Krasner who had been defending Lyons, and the most expansive version doesn't actually make Brown look innocent.

The prosecutor's office still looks slimy, and I would be kinda surprised if the CIU genuinely couldn't find a single debatable conviction, but these don't look it. Don't have the time to look at the other ten cases right now.

Thanks for taking the time to answer this.

The Hart murders seem to be straightforward, and the only real change I would make post-sentencing is "In fact, you and your co-accused should be taken into a room and have the shit kicked out of you", not any "poor little tyke, you were framed!" changes.

The others seem complicated and messy in the way of habitual criminals. The problem with jail house confessions, or police interviews where everyone has a strong incentive to say "It wasn't me, it was him!", is that there is too strong an incentive to lie in order to get reduced sentences/plea bargains for yourself. So claiming "I was Bill's cellmate and he told me he definitely did it all, now do I get parole like you guys promised me?" isn't worth spit in my view.

The prosecutors do seem to have been ideologically captured, at least, but the skimming I've done of that Winkelman link , I honestly can't figure out what the hell they thought they were doing, or trying to achieve.

Yeah, the prosecutor's office seems to have been more interested in getting someone, rather than necessarily getting the right guy. I've got a bit of sympathy. Funt seems like a jerk in the extent that he'll file stuff he knows is not true, rather than just being on the other side, and there's a long-standing tendency for aggressive defenses to call everything down to a sneeze Giglio material. But 'joking' about sending detectives to interview a defense lawyer is inappropriate without far great evidence of genuine illegal behavior, and some of the occlusions here did more to make the conviction riskier, rather than actually mattering.

((This points to a general problem with Brady/Giglio, where police and prosecutors have a lot of incentive to abuse it in marginal cases where they're likely to lose anyway, aka innocent people. But that's a broader 4th Amendment and 14th amendment problem.))

Krasner's team... philosophically, they're just opposed to the death penalty as a category. Charitably, that's out of a feeling that it was disproportionately applied on the basis of race, but they're really heavy on defense-oriented lawyers who just like getting thirty bites at the apple regardless of the sentence or crime, so the charitable argument isn't very strong. The court might be overstating things when they say the DAO is trying to overturn literally every death sentence -- there's a couple non-African-American death row inmates Krasner might skip, either due to the severity of their crimes or not seeing the racial nexus as applicable there -- but I wouldn't consider it a safe bet, either.

Tactically? They probably got away with it for a while, and the courts have genuinely had to fudge the rules to handle it. Toa's opinion has a dissent with multiple signatories, and that's not great in my opinion, but it means that, at least by Pennsylvanian standards, Krasner's team and behavior are not hilariously illegitimate as a tactic.

Did the convicted person commit the murders or not?

Presumably yes, since the error that the prosecutor conceded was imaginary.

Was the foostering about "okay, he dunnit, but we don't believe in the death penalty here so let's pretend everything was done wrongly so sentence can be changed to life imprisonment"?

Yes. It's a bit complicated:

(1) Conviction of murdering Crawford → life sentence.

(2) Conviction of murdering Richardson + prior conviction of murdering Crawford (aggravating factor) → death sentence.

(3) Appeal of death sentence? Nope—appeal is rejected.

(4) Appeal of conviction of murdering Crawford → no aggravating factor → another appeal of death sentence? Nope—appeal of conviction of murdering Crawford is rejected.

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