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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10564 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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Remember this comment I made about Philadelphia prosecutor (district attorney) Larry Krasner back in June? The situation has escalated.

  • A person is charged with a 2007 murder. In 2009 he is convicted, and in 2010 he is sentenced to life in prison. In 2015, his state habeas petition is rejected.

  • Also in 2015, he files a federal habeas petition. The Philadelphia prosecutor's office resists the petition in 2017, but in 2018 Krasner is elected as prosecutor, and in 2019 the prosecutor's office stops resisting. However, the federal proceedings are stayed until the defendant's second state habeas petition has finished being digested by the state judicial system.

  • In 2022, the federal proceedings finally start up again. Krasner's office concedes that the defendant's trial lawyer was ineffective for failing to object to a detective's hearsay statement (that a non-testifying witness told the detective that the defendant was the shooter). Since the proceeding no longer is adversarial, the judge invites the state prosecutor (attorney general) to intervene as amicus curiae.

  • In 2026, Krasner's office moves to withdraw its concession because the document contains "material misstatements". The judge investigates. I'm not sure that I'm summarizing the sequence of events correctly, but I think it's something like this:

    • (1) Matthew Stiegler, chief of the office's Conviction Integrity Unit (so presumably a direct subordinate of Krasner), looks at the case with the aid of the Innocence Project and the Defender Association of Philadelphia, and decides that it should be conceded.

    • (2) He intentionally assigns the job of "writing" the concession—in reality, just copying-and-pasting whatever Innocence Project and Defender Association say, and not bothering to talk with the relevant witnesses—to inexperienced assistant prosecutor Jaclyn Mason.

    • (3) After reading the concession document, the judge doesn't just swallow it, but instead demands a hearing to get sworn testimony from the relevant witnesses. This prompts a "panic" in the prosecutor's office.

    • (4) Four assistant prosecutors go over the concession document again and find many "misstatements" (lies) in it. The four recognize that this is all Stiegler's/Krasner's fault, but Mason misinterprets them as assigning the blame to her, and submits her resignation to Krasner.

    • (5) Krasner's chief of staff Jennifer Lin directs Mason to stop working immediately rather than staying until the end of the month, in order to make her resignation seem inculpatory to the judge.

    • (6) Judge-written heading: "Stiegler Schemes to Blame Mason". However, the four assistant prosecutors refuse to do this, and insist that this misconduct be referred to the state prosecutor. Krasner wants to "protect the office".

    • (7) The four assistant prosecutors finally submit to the judge a document stating that Krasner, along with the entire prosecutor's office, has a conflict of interest and should be disqualified from participating in the case.

  • The judge doesn't like this rigmarole one bit.

The credible evidence is tantamount to a prima facie showing of conduct that may constitute false statements, false declarations made under oath, perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy.

I have thus reluctantly concluded that Philadelphia's highest law enforcement official and one of his top assistants may have violated the law. In these circumstances, with the issuance of this Memorandum, I refer the DAO, Mr. Krasner, and Stiegler to this District's United States Attorney's Office for investigation and other appropriate action.

It appears that in attempting to impede the Court's hearing and inquiry into the DAO’s conduct in Johnson, Mr. Krasner, aided by Stiegler, put the Law Division supervisors in an impossible situation that might jeopardize them professionally and may have violated the law. Mr. Krasner and Stiegler have thus created a basis for their disqualification from Johnson and their referral to the Department of Justice.

(The judge was appointed by a Republican president, and was himself a Philadelphia assistant prosecutor in the 1977–1979 and 1981–1983 periods.)

It's a little rough because the actual facts for the actual conviction are genuinely messy.

Johnson's conviction for the robbery and homicide of Kenyatta Smith depended heavily on Ozzie Clark's testimony identifying him, and if you actually look at the transcript, that identification is genuinely pretty shaggy as testified. Charitably, Clark did genuinely have reason to fear retribution had he immediately pointed at a murderer, and at court received not-very-subtle intimidation in the court room, so him claiming to have no idea who the shooter was the day after the murder could plausibly just that. It's also a lot of impeachment material for a witness. The jury had the information, and the supposedly prejudicial hearsay was just a police officer saying the other accused guy pointed to Johnson, so I can't judge too critically by just reading transcripts. I can at least see it, though, where some of the others are just clearly guilty people.

Even the misleading statements during the concession aren't that misleading, at least by the standards of defense attorneys and activists. I'm pretty pessimistic on what that means, so we're fully in damning with faint praise space, but you don't have fabricated quotes or completely made up claims. Clark did genuinely say he was motivated to provide testimony now because of "civic duty"/"civil duty" after claiming something entirely different before, and did genuinely say he had "not visual" identification. But he also claimed during the trial he "I didn't need any problems by getting involved in all this" (aka feared retribution), and that he'd seen Johnson very shortly before the shooting, had known him for a long time, and had heard his voice, and none of those things made it into the concession. That's the sort of stuff that's a central case of what 'duty of candor to the court' means in a classroom, and also the sort of failure of candor that ends up polluting widespread pleadings.

But the actual behavior in the review office is hilariously bad. "Stiegler Schemes to Blame Mason" sounds like a partisan judge editorializing, until you read the section:

At this time, Stiegler “lobbied” Ernst and Napiorski. Early on June 5, Stiegler told Ernst that Mason “had purposefully inserted the false facts into the response,” and that “this was one hundred percent her fault, zero percent his fault.” Stiegler suggested that the DAO “file something with the Court preemptively before the hearing explaining that we had gone through Ms. Mason’s cases, that we found mistakes in other cases too, and that, therefore, this was all her fault.” Ernst responded that if there were errors in Mason’s other cases, this would only show a pattern of poor supervision by Stiegler. He nonetheless persisted:

[W]e have to get out ahead of this. Because if we get out ahead of it, then the Judge will view this as one rogue ADA—well, an ADA who went rogue basically. And whereas if we don’t, then he will think of this as this was all Matthew Stiegler’s fault. Stiegler made the same suggestion to Napiorski: “to look through old filings or old documents that Ms. Mason prepared and find more mistakes and to kind of paint her as a rogue actor.” Yet, Stiegler testified before me that Mason was an “experienced” ADA, “one of our strongest ADAs in the [U]nit.”

And then later:

Mr. Krasner’s actions are more troubling. He did not simply learn of the Stiegler proposal; he urged the Law Division supervisors—who serve at Mr. Krasner’s pleasure—to implement it and to present a false narrative to the Court. Mr. Krasner directed that the DAO stay involved in Johnson “to protect the office”—which Napiorski believed also meant protecting Mr. Krasner himself—and that the Four “not do any investigation”. “[Mr. Krasner] didn’t want people poking around in what occurred.” (Id. at 126:2 (Wildberger).) He thus sought to direct the very lawyers obligated by law to correct the Concession’s errors to do just the opposite. Even worse, when told that the Four believed they had to alert me, Mr. Krasner responded that “there would be consequences for Ms. Ernst if she alerted the Court to the conflict issue,” and that there would be consequences “if anyone did.”

This is three stooges shit.

Now, to be fair, this is one judge's summary of affidavits, where pretty much everyone involved has strong incentive to cover their ass and sell someone else up the river. But everyone there is a lawyer, so however you shake out the properties, somebodies lying. My gutcheck has Stiegler and Krasner at the worst side of the line, for what it's worth.

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