Head of Conviction Integrity Unit in DA’s office steps down after judge points to possible crimes, sources say
ADA Matthew Stiegler stepped down from his supervisory role, but would remain a prosecutor with the office, the sources said.
The head of the Conviction Integrity Unit in the District Attorney’s Office has stepped down from his supervisory role, sources said, days after a federal judge said his actions in a contentious post-conviction case could amount to crimes.
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Stiegler resigned from his position as supervisor of the unit on Thursday, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel decision.
Stiegler would remain a prosecutor with the office, the sources said, though it wasn’t immediately clear what his role would be.
Stiegler did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the DA’s Office also did not respond.
The personnel shake-up comes as Stiegler faces scrutiny over his role in a controversial case that has since drawn extraordinary attention and criticism from a federal judge — and raised questions about one of District Attorney Larry Krasner’s key policy initiatives.
» READ MORE: Philly DA Larry Krasner faces legal and political uncertainty after a judge said he may have committed crimes
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond said Stiegler and Krasner may have broken the law in their handling of the case, and said he referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate whether the pair should be charged with crimes including conspiracy or obstruction of justice.
Stiegler came under public scrutiny this spring over his unit’s handling of the case of Dennis Johnson, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009. Prosecutors for years had opposed his bid for freedom.
Then, in 2022, Assistant District Attorney Jaclyn Mason, who worked under Stiegler, filed a brief saying she’d discovered problems with Johnson’s case, and recommended the conviction be overturned.
Diamond scheduled an evidentiary hearing on the matter this spring.
Ahead of that hearing, Mason’s colleagues in the Law Division reviewed the filings in the case and found what they called “material misstatements” in the brief. They sought to withdraw Mason’s filing, and apologized to Diamond.
Mason resigned. Diamond called a hearing on the matter.
Mason, during the first of a series of explosive hearings in front of Diamond, said she only filed the brief because Stiegler had pressured her to do so.
Stiegler, she said, had been “colluding” with Johnson’s defense attorneys from the Federal Community Defender Office and the Pennsylvania Innocence Project on the most effective paths to secure Johnson’s release. Neither of them had reviewed key evidence in Johnson’s case before seeking to overturn his murder conviction, she said.
“Matt told me: ‘If it’s good enough for the Innocence Project, it’s good enough for me,’” Mason said.
Stiegler denied this and said he’s reviewed every case carefully.
In a subsequent hearing, supervisors in the office’s Law Division testified that Stiegler, in an attempt to avoid blame, then suggested they review Mason’s cases to look for other errors in her work to paint her as a “rogue” prosecutor who was routinely making mistakes.
Those supervisors said Krasner later echoed that potential course of action, saying he’d learned it from Stiegler and it was a “good idea.”
The supervisors refused.
Diamond said those actions were particularly troubling, and suggested Krasner and Stiegler were conspiring to “present a false narrative to the Court.”
Diamond also said he found Stiegler’s testimony “was often contradictory, evasive, or outright dishonest,” and that Stiegler may have committed perjury while on the stand.
In a statement Tuesday, Krasner said, “I respectfully and vigorously disagree” with Diamond’s findings.
“I look forward to appealing to the higher court as soon as the law allows,” he said, adding that he could not comment further because the case is pending.
Staff writer Chris Palmer contributed to this article.
