A woman who received $300,000 from the city over a road rage incident was sentenced for a separate DUI

A Philadelphia woman who received a $300,000 settlement from the city in 2021 over accusations that an off-duty prosecutor had her improperly arrested following a road rage dispute was sentenced Friday to 90 days in jail for a separate drunken driving offense.

Khasandra Franklin, 27, told Municipal Court Judge Wendy L. Pew that she was remorseful for the new incident, during which she drove the wrong way on I-76 in South Philadelphia and crashed head-on into another woman’s car in September 2022. That case is Franklin’s second DUI conviction since 2020; the earlier case had been pending when the city agreed to pay her to resolve her lawsuit.

Franklin said during Friday’s hearing that the money from that windfall is gone, in part because she has paid for alcohol treatment. Pew gave her 20 days’ worth of credit for time she spent in an inpatient rehabilitation facility earlier this year, and imposed five years of probation.

“You have a pattern of making some pretty bad mistakes,” she said. Franklin declined to comment after the hearing, as did her lawyer, John Della Rocca.

Franklin made news in September 2020 following a confrontation with Anthony Voci, then the chief of the homicide unit in the District Attorney’s Office.

In a case that was widely covered, Voci said at the time that he had been driving his Harley-Davidson motorcycle home from the scene of a double murder when a car cut him off on Kelly Drive near Midvale Avenue and nearly ran him off the road. Voci said he swerved and braked to avoid being hit.

Police later traced the vehicle to Franklin’s East Mount Airy home, and Voci identified her as the driver. Franklin was arrested and initially charged with aggravated assault, though the case was quickly downgraded to reckless endangerment and reckless driving.

Franklin, meanwhile, accused Voci of calling her and her passenger “Black bitches,” an allegation that Voci — who is white — denied. Some critics, including David Fisher, president of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the National Black Police Association, contended that Voci had “abused his power” by seeking to have Franklin charged.

Weeks after the incident, in November 2020, Voci was transferred out of homicide and into a lower-profile unit handling insurance fraud cases.

Then, in February 2021, the state Attorney General’s Office — which prosecuted the case against Franklin because of Voci’s ties to the DA’s Office — withdrew all charges after she agreed to undergo a drug and alcohol evaluation.

Weeks after that, Franklin sued Voci and members of the Police Department, accusing them of false arrest, false imprisonment, and other misdeeds including assault, which Franklin said occurred when a sergeant struck her and knocked her phone to the ground during the arrest.

The city paid Franklin $300,000 to settle the suit in June 2021, according to city records.

Six months later, court records show, Franklin pleaded guilty in Montgomery County to DUI and disorderly conduct — charges that had been pending when she filed her lawsuit — and received up to six months’ probation.

In September 2022, court records say, Franklin was arrested for DUI, this time accused of driving while intoxicated and causing a “head-on collision” on I-76 near West Passyunk Avenue. State troopers in court documents also accused her of acting belligerently, including exhibiting “fighting or threatening behavior.”

That case is the one that led to Friday’s sentencing. Franklin said in court that she no longer drinks alcohol, though she denied that she had been drinking during her first DUI case in Montgomery County, saying she’d simply fallen asleep behind the wheel.

The woman whom Franklin collided with in her more recent case, meanwhile, told Pew and Deputy Attorney General Katherine A. McDermott that the crash has had a lasting impact on her, forcing her to buy a new car, impacting her credit, and causing her to have painful memories every time she drives by the scene of the crash.

“It took a serious mental toll,” said the woman, Danuta Coates. “We’ve got to own up to what we do.”