A federal judge suggested actions by DA Larry Krasner’s office in a controversial appellate case could amount to crimes

A federal judge on Thursday said actions city prosecutors took in a controversial appellate case could ultimately amount to perjury, conspiracy, or obstruction of justice — a stunning suggestion that inserted the threat of potential criminal consequences into a matter that has already roiled District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office.

U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond did not say whom he was referring to when he made that remark during an unusual hearing in his courtroom. But he raised the issue while an assistant district attorney was testifying about conversations she had with Krasner about the case in which she said Krasner told her to “protect the office” and, by extension, violate her ethical obligations as a lawyer.

“If what they say is true,” Diamond said, “potential wrongdoing abounds.”

Diamond, as a judge, does not have the ability to file criminal charges himself. But his remarks from the bench were the latest development in the case, which has already featured a host of explosive accusations about how prosecutors have behaved while determining whether a man’s murder conviction should be overturned.

And it was not the only notable moment during Thursday’s hearing.

Assistant District Attorney Katherine Ernst testified for nearly two hours in the morning and made a series of striking statements about some of the inner-office drama behind the case.

In Ernst’s telling, Krasner repeatedly told her and others to protect the office and avoid additional scrutiny from the courts. She said he threatened “consequences” — which she believed to be potential firings — for those who resisted his preferred method of handling it.

She said Krasner rebuffed her advice to ask the state attorney general’s office to take the lead on the matter, because Krasner “hated” everyone in that office, and, according to Ernst, said “everybody in that [office] is Nazis.”

And Ernst said Krasner and another supervisor, Matthew Stiegler, tried to persuade her to effectively find a way to protect Stiegler’s reputation at the expense of a prosecutor he supervised, Jaclyn Mason.

As Ernst recalled it, Stiegler said he wanted to make it seem as if any mistakes in the case were “100% [Mason’s] fault and 0% his fault.”

In Ernst’s view, the events demonstrated that Krasner cared “more about the reputation of the office than competently handling this case.”

Ernst is scheduled to continue testifying Thursday afternoon, and she could face the unusual fate of being cross-examined by another prosecutor in her own office.

Her testimony served as an extended rebuke of the office where she remains employed as a staffer in the Law Division.

She had previously accused Krasner in court documents of some of the conduct she testified about Thursday. Krasner’s office responded by saying her filings were unauthorized and “ill-informed.”

Mason, too, has accused Krasner’s office of wrongdoing. When she was on the stand last month, she said she’d signed off on a brief that recommended agreeing to overturn a murder conviction because she was pressured to do so by Stiegler. But neither she nor Stiegler had done any meaningful review of the evidence, she said, and she accused Stiegler of colluding with defense attorneys to try and get the case thrown out.

The prosecution at issue is the conviction of Dennis Johnson for second-degree murder. In 2009, a jury found Johnson guilty of fatally shooting Kenyatta Smith during a robbery outside a North Philadelphia convenience store two years earlier. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Johnson appealed, in part because he said his trial attorney was ineffective. And in 2022, Mason filed court documents agreeing and saying Johnson’s conviction should be overturned.

But this spring, Ernst and some of her colleagues reviewed the case and took the opposite view. And then they took the unusual step of filing a brief to ask that Mason’s recommendation be withdrawn.

In the days after that development, Mason resigned. And in the weeks that followed, Ernst said, she and other supervisors got into an extended series of arguments with Krasner over how to handle the situation — which is what formed the basis of much of her testimony Thursday morning.

In addition to hearing additional testimony from Ernst, Diamond, the judge, has said he wants to hear from three of her colleagues as well.

Each was scheduled to testify Thursday, although it was not clear if they’d be able to do so or if he would need to schedule another hearing.

This is a developing story that will be updated.