The court case D.A. Seth Williams kept out of court

PHILADELPHIA District Attorney Seth Williams knows his way around a courtroom and how to spin in the court of public opinion, but he's remained silent about a 2013 federal lawsuit that leveled potentially explosive and embarrassing allegations against him.

So damning were the claims in the suit, filed against Williams by a white female homicide prosecutor whom he fired and had escorted from the District Attorney's Office building in 2011, that the racial discrimination suit never made it to court.

Nine months after being filed by MK Feeney, the city quietly settled the suit out of court in February 2014, handing the plaintiff a six-figure settlement.

Feeney, 49, who now operates her own Center City law practice, declined to discuss the lawsuit or settlement.

But a former city assistant district attorney, who asked not to be named, citing fear of reprisals, said, "To violate somebody's civil rights is a big deal. By settling the suit, they are tacitly admitting" wrongdoing.

The city's Law Department - whose attorneys represent the city and its employees when they are sued - released the settlement agreement to the Daily News under the state's Right-to-Know law on Jan. 18. The paper asked for the information in November.

Despite Feeney's lawsuit being possibly the first ever by a former assistant D.A. against a Philadelphia district attorney - according to sources - the settlement flew under the radar of the city's news outlets, none of which ever reported on the resolution of the case.

"I don't think any other D.A. has acted like him," the former prosecutor said when asked about the rarity of a D.A.'s being sued by a former subordinate.

"I know [former D.A.] Lynne Abraham would not have fired someone unless the reason was well-documented. She would not fire people for no reason," the source added.

Feeney, who had been a city prosecutor for 15 years, was fired "effective immediately"on June 23, 2011, after being accused of being "untruthful" during an office-wide investigation Williams launched to learn who leaked information that appeared in a Daily News front-page article that June 2 about turmoil in the D.A.'s Office, according to the lawsuit.

The paper reported that morale among staffers was low, due in part to Williams' decision to hire a young African American prosecutor with a questionable background.

Feeney's denials that she was the leaker were ignored, and she was escorted to the front door by two detectives, who told her that she could not return to the building and that her picture would be posted at the entrance, sources said.

The lawsuit, filed in May 2013, states that a fellow homicide prosecutor, a black man who is a member of the same fraternity as Williams, was not fired even after confessing to leaking information to the paper.

That man was transferred from the Homicide Unit to a less prestigious unit, but continued to receive the same salary, according to the suit. He has since left the D.A.'s Office for private practice.

"Defendant's unequal, race-based treatment of Plaintiff was consistent with, and part of, Defendant's policy, practice and custom to consider race in connection with employment decisions and to treat nonwhite employees more favorably than similarly situated white employees in the office of the District Attorney," the suit states.

The suit also alleged that Williams engaged in:

Disciplining white employees more harshly than nonwhite employees; investigating the publication of private information about nonwhite employees but not the publication of private information about white employees; promoting nonwhites into open positions over qualified whites; removing qualified whites and replacing them with nonwhites; selecting nonwhite individuals for newly created positions without posting the positions and giving qualified whites an opportunity to be considered; considering racial demographics of the city in making personnel decisions regarding hiring, terminations and job assignments; waiving job requirements for nonwhite employees but not for whites.

"She would not have been fired if she was black. She was not the right color. She was not in the same fraternity," the former prosecutor said, referring to Williams' Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

After Feeney was fired and walked to the door, "People in the office were terrified," the source said.

"It was humiliating. The most humiliating process possible. [Williams] designed it to be a message to everyone: 'This is what happens if you go to the press,' " the source added.

In a July 2013 response to the lawsuit, Deputy City Solicitor Nicole Morris wrote that Williams admitted calling a meeting of all the assistant district attorneys after publication of the Daily News article.

Williams admonished them, and said that one or more of them had thrown their colleague "under the bus" and that he was personally offended, according to the city's response.

Williams, however, denied the lawsuit allegation that "he found it highly unacceptable for people to talk to the press about what goes on in the office."

Williams, 49, declined to comment for this article, said spokesman Cameron Kline.

"The office and the D.A. does not make any personnel decisions based on race or gender," Kline said.

He confirmed that no other lawsuits by former city prosecutors have been filed against Williams.

Under the February 2014 settlement, the city and Williams admitted no wrongdoing toward Feeney, who received $190,000.

Williams, now in his second term in office and rumored to have higher political aspirations, is the city's first African American district attorney. Though fond of noting that "first," Williams surprised and irritated some black supporters last year when he pursued charges against six black current and former Philadelphia public officeholders after a white fellow Democrat, state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane, refused to prosecute them, saying they had been ensnared in a racism-tainted sting launched by her Republican predecessor.

Williams also caught flak from blacks and women for refusing to fire three white male prosecutors who have been accused of sending or receiving racist and sexist emails on state computers when they worked in the state Attorney General's Office prior to Kane's taking office in 2013.

Could Williams' latest actions have been fueled in part by his desire to appeal politically to more whites in the wake of claims raised by former employees, including Feeney?

"I think that is the narrative that exists in the public sphere. . . . From the outside looking in, there are people who see him broadening his appeal to the white elite," said Chad Dion Lassiter, president and cofounder of Black Men at Penn at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice.

Lassiter said he believes Williams made the right decision to prosecute the six politicians - five of whom have pleaded guilty - but should have issued harsher punishments to the "Porngate" prosecutors, whom Williams reassigned and ordered to attend a one-day sensitivity training class.

"He needs to get on the right side with regard to Porngate," Lassiter said. "It has to be more than a tap on the wrist."

While veteran Philadelphia criminal defense attorney Berto M. Elmore said he doesn't believe Williams is antiwhite, he said his decisions to prosecute the black politicians while all but pardoning the white prosecutors has damaged him politically beyond repair in the black community.

"I've been hearing in the street that nobody black is going to support him because of those prosecutions," Elmore said. "He's already done, it's just a matter of time. I don't think he's gonna survive it. That's what I've been hearing."

Elmore, who applauded Williams' recent appointment of George D. Mosee Jr. as first assistant district attorney, said the D.A. needlessly put himself in career limbo by supporting the Porngate three: Frank Fina, E. Marc Costanzo, and Patrick Blessington.

"You can't have that many people mad at you on City Council and think everything is going to be OK," Elmore said, noting that the majority of Council last month approved a resolution calling on Williams to fire the prosecutors.

Blessington was one of three D.A.'s Office officials who "interrogated" Feeney about the 2011 news leak that led to her firing, according to her suit.

"She got fired without any meaningful investigation, and then there are these guys with all this porn and Seth's bending over backward for them," the former assistant D.A. source said. "He's always talking about second chances. It's bull----."

deanm@phillynews.com

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