Forceful Pa. Supreme Court ruling constrains one of DA Larry Krasner’s signature initiatives

The state Supreme Court’s decision to limit Philadelphia prosecutors’ ability to seek to overturn old convictions not only took aim at one of District Attorney Larry Krasner’s defining initiatives — it altered the work of an office he will one day leave behind.

The high court’s ruling adds an extraordinary new layer of oversight to an issue that helped make Krasner one of the nation’s most prominent progressive prosecutors: correcting what he has described as injustices of decades past.

But the newly established changes to the appellate processes in Philadelphia will outlive Krasner’s tenure and reshape the way the office reviews post-conviction cases for years to come. It could apply not only to high-profile exonerations in murder convictions, but also extend to cases that even Krasner’s more conservative predecessors were eager to undo, like drug and gun convictions linked to corrupt cops.

It also deepens a yearslong conflict between Krasner and his critics in the justice system. Several justices, in dissenting opinions, raised concerns that the change could inject politics into a high-stakes legal process.

Since taking office in 2018, Krasner has made post-conviction review a centerpiece of his reform agenda. His office said it has overturned the wrongful convictions of 59 people — almost all of them Black men. It has also struck deals that allowed defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges in dozens of other cases in which prosecutors did not say those charged were innocent, but agreed their original trials were unfair, often because of prosecutorial or police misconduct.

But the high court, in a forceful majority opinion written by Justice Kevin Dougherty, said Krasner’s prosecutors had misled judges in several of those cases, were not acting as the necessary adversaries to test the cases’ merit, and that the courts could no longer trust his prosecutors’ word when deciding whether to overturn a conviction.

Moving forward, the justices ruled, if the district attorney’s office agrees to alter a sentence or overturn a past conviction, judges must ask the state attorney general’s office to review the case before proceeding. The ruling only applies to Philadelphia; prosecutors in every other Pennsylvania county can continue to evaluate cases on their own.

Krasner declined to comment this week. While it was not immediately clear whether he had a legal path to challenge the ruling, he said in a video statement last week that it “undermines the value of a vote in Philadelphia.”

He compared criticism of his post-conviction review efforts to attacks that have been leveled against other social and racial justice movements.

“We know where we are in the fight,” he said, “and once we get past the fight, we all win.”

But the Supreme Court’s ruling sharply curtails part of that effort, and is expected to significantly reshape — and likely slow — one of the most consequential parts of Krasner’s agenda.

It was “an extraordinary remedy for something the court thought was an extraordinary problem,” said Aaron Marcus, chief of the appeals division at the Defender Association of Philadelphia.

But, he added, “the remedy might go beyond what was necessary in the court’s mind to address the problem in front of it.”

While the decision gives the attorney general broader authority to intervene when city prosecutors support post-conviction relief, it remains unclear how often — or when in the process — it will weigh in.

Brett Hambright, a spokesperson for Attorney General Dave Sunday’s office, said in a statement this week that officials were still evaluating the order and its potential impact. Because of the many unknowns, he said, “it may be difficult to fully assess ... until the process truly begins.”

Marcus, of the Defender Association, said the ruling could affect cases that the conviction integrity unit does not typically handle, such as weapons and drug-possession cases, as well as more routine matters, like correcting prison sentences that had been miscalculated.

“There’s already too few attorneys with too little time and insufficient resources,” he said.

Marissa Boyers Bluestine, assistant director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania law school, said that because the courts did not set a timeline for how quickly the attorney general’s office must review each case, the added oversight could draw out an already yearslong appellate process filled with delays. And, she said, it could create “confusion on who exactly is representing the state.”

“Now you have two entities who are potentially in opposition to each other,” she said. “It raises confusion and diminishes the real trust in the criminal legal system.”

Several defense lawyers who handle post-conviction cases were similarly concerned by the unknowns of the ruling — and said the majority opinion did not address the decades of problematic police and prosecutorial behavior that led to this moment.

Michael Wiseman said Krasner’s office has opposed most of his clients’ petitions over the years. Like other district attorneys before him, Krasner isn’t perfect, Wiseman said, but the high court “is vexing in its willingness to ignore all the times when Krasner’s office got it right.”

At the same time, he said, “It is similarly vexing for not recognizing the imperfections of past administrations, who, unlike Krasner, defended every conviction without regard to innocence or unconstitutional convictions.”

Adding to the complexity of the issue, some justices believed the majority’s decision could threaten to reignite long-running feuds between Krasner and prosecutors he’s clashed with in the past.

In one of his first actions after taking office in 2018, Krasner fired dozens of veteran prosecutors, effectively describing them as unfit to serve in a reform-oriented administration. Some who were ousted then went on to work at the state attorney general’s office, and Krasner, in a remark that was widely criticized, jokingly referred to that office as “Paraguay,” the South American country where Nazis fled after World War II.

Justice Christine Donohue warned in a dissenting opinion that the majority’s ruling could threaten to inject personal disputes between rival lawyers into a process that is supposed to be unbiased. In addition, she said, giving the attorney general’s office authority in those cases could give some state prosecutors a role in defending convictions they helped obtain when they worked for the city.

“This is in stark contrast to acting as a friend of the court,” she said.

Ben Lerner, a former Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge, said Krasner deserves credit for creating a meaningful system to revisit convictions — something he said previous administrations largely failed to do.

But state and federal courts have repeatedly raised concerns about the office’s methods, he said, including allegations that prosecutors excluded investigating officers and former trial attorneys from parts of the review process, and focused disproportionate attention on cases tied to prosecutors Krasner had clashed with during his years as a defense lawyer.

“In my view, it’s a shame,” he said, “because this was basically a very important thing that he was doing that previous district attorneys had had no interest in doing.”