A Philly judge who fined DA Larry Krasner’s office $120,000 said an appellate court should impose more penalties

A Philadelphia judge who earlier this year fined District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office $120,000 over its handling of an open records dispute defended her decision Wednesday — and said an appellate court should consider imposing more penalties against the DA’s office as it continues challenging her rulings in the case.

Common Pleas Court Judge Anne Marie Coyle wrote in an opinion that Krasner’s office unfairly attacked her character as it sought to reverse her decisions. And she said his office did so “to avoid acceptance of responsibility for the continuing commission of reprehensible misconduct by its attorneys motivated by bad faith.”

She asked Commonwealth Court to deny Krasner’s attempts to overturn the penalties she levied against his office, and added: “Additional sanctions are warranted.” She did not specify what those penalties should be, nor did she impose any new ones herself.

Coyle’s remarks were another display of how bitter the case has become during its five-plus years winding through the courts. And they served as the latest development in the unusually heated legal saga that has gone on to pit Krasner against the judge and several former city prosecutors.

Krasner’s office declined to comment as the matter remains pending.

The episode traces back to 2018, when Krasner’s office filed a motion to dismiss all charges against Dontia Patterson, who had been convicted of murder a decade earlier. Former Assistant District Attorney Beth McCaffery handled Patterson’s initial trial, which ended in a hung jury. And although McCaffery was not named in Krasner’s dismissal motion, prosecutors said Patterson’s conviction was secured by “egregious misconduct,” including the concealment of exculpatory evidence, over both of Patterson’s trials.

In 2020, McCaffery — who by then had left the office — submitted a right-to-know request seeking access to the case file, believing it would prove she had done nothing wrong. But Krasner’s office denied her request, saying the documents were exempt from public disclosure under Pennsylvania’s open records laws.

The dispute has taken years to litigate; earlier this spring, Krasner and some of his top lieutenants were even called to testify at several days of evidentiary hearings.

In March, after those hearings concluded, Coyle ruled that Krasner’s office had unfairly accused McCaffery and another former prosecutor on Patterson’s second trial, Richard Sax, of misconduct, saying the allegations “had no good faith basis” and were “maliciously intended.”

She ordered the office to pay $10,000 to McCaffery, $10,000 to Sax, and $100,000 to the courts. She also ordered a series of trainings for Krasner’s prosecutors on issues including professional conduct and truthfulness, and said McCaffery should be given access to the files.

Two weeks after her ruling, Krasner’s office filed paperwork asking for Coyle to reverse her penalty and recuse herself. Prosecutors said in court documents that Coyle had displayed an improper bias against them, and said her law clerk had liked posts on social media that were openly critical of Krasner.

Coyle declined the recusal request almost as soon as it was filed. And in her memo Wednesday, she said Krasner’s office had inaccurately attributed the alleged social media conduct to her law clerk, who Coyle said never posted about the case online and does not maintain social media accounts from which she could do so.

“This Court’s actual ‘law clerk’ had to defend herself from the DAO’s blatant misrepresentation,” Coyle wrote.

The judge said the online conduct could have been the work of another person who was then serving as a support staffer but no longer works for her. But she also said she had seen no evidence to support substantiating prosecutors’ assertions.

In any case, Coyle said every ruling she has made in the matter has been supported by the law and should be affirmed.

There is no timetable by which the appellate court must issue its rulings on the issues.