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Notes -
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 judge was appointed by a Republican president, and was himself a Philadelphia assistant prosecutor in the 1977–1979 and 1981–1983 periods.)
How often does something like this happen, where a judge refers a DA to the feds for prosecution?
Very, very rarely. Judges and prosecutors have near absolute legal immunity for anything they do in the process of carrying out their duties.
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