Kane drops motion after judge chastises her lawyer
Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane's legal team dropped a bid to secretly pursue a legal motion on her behalf Wednesday, after a Philadelphia judge accused one of her lawyers of grossly distorting the judge's words.
Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane's legal team dropped a bid to secretly pursue a legal motion on her behalf Wednesday, after a Philadelphia judge accused one of her lawyers of grossly distorting the judge's words.
As a result, Kane's lawyers now plan to file in open court her argument that political enemies have made her a victim of "vindictive and selective" prosecution.
In a previous filing, Ross Kramer, a member of Kane's legal team, said the judge, Diana Anhalt, had warned that she might hold Kane and her lawyers in contempt if they filed a public defense motion alleging that Kane was a victim of selective prosecution.
But in a court order made public Wednesday during a hearing in Norristown, Anhalt said that was not so.
"This court never made the statements attributed to it by attorney Kramer," Anhalt wrote, adding that Kramer was guilty of an "intentional misrepresentation."
After Kramer was chastised, Kane's lawyers abandoned their bid to file their selective-prosecution argument secretly, under seal, viewable only by prosecutors and the judge in Kane's pending criminal trial.
Instead, they will file the potentially incendiary motion publicly in the coming week.
Last month, lawyers for the Inquirer, the Daily News, and Philly.com and four other news organizations filed a legal motion asking that all of Kane's legal arguments be accessible to the public.
Kane, a Democrat who is not seeking a second term, has been charged with perjury, official oppression, and other crimes. Prosecutors in Montgomery County say she illegally leaked confidential information to a newspaper to hurt a critic and then lied about her actions under oath. She has denied any wrongdoing.
Kane wants to file a motion blaming her arrest on maneuvering by political enemies. Even though she is being tried in Montgomery County, she has been fearful that the details of her argument could run afoul of a protective order issued by a Philadelphia judge, Anhalt.
Anhalt presides over a grand jury that has resurrected a corruption case originally closed by Kane, and its witnesses have included former or current Kane aides. Anhalt's protective order bans retaliation against those witnesses.
In the motion she intends to file in the coming days, Kane apparently wants to name and criticize some of those aides. Kramer had written that Anhalt suggested that doing so would violate the protective order. Kramer declined to comment Wednesday.
In her order, Anhalt said she had never made such a threat. Kane need not violate witnesses' rights to vindicate her own, the judge wrote.
Earlier, Montgomery County Court Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy had rejected Kane's demand that she and all other members of the Montgomery County bench step aside from the case and that an out-of-county judge step in.
Kane's lawyers said Wednesday they will seek to appeal that ruling and others to Superior Court, ahead of any trial.
215-854-4821 @CraigRMcCoy