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Kane juror: 'No one's above the law'

He had never heard of Kathleen G. Kane until he became Juror Number Six. But after sitting through her weeklong perjury trial, Adam Galasso said, "The amount of evidence against Ms. Kane was just unreal."

He had never heard of Kathleen G. Kane until he became Juror Number Six.

But after sitting through her weeklong perjury trial, Adam Galasso said, "The amount of evidence against Ms. Kane was just unreal."

Still, he said, jurors were conscious of the gravity of their decision Monday as they convicted the then-Pennsylvania attorney general of two felony counts of perjury and seven misdemeanor counts of abusing the power of her office.

"This is one of the top prosecutors in Pennsylvania," he said. "So, giving that verdict, it was scary."

Galasso, 24, of Conshohocken, was one of six men and six women on the Montgomery County Court jury that determined Kane's fate. In an interview Wednesday, he discussed the jury's decision: a conviction on all nine charges, confirming prosecutors' allegation that the attorney general leaked secret grand jury information to a reporter to embarrass a political rival, and later lied to cover it up.

Galasso, who works as a contractor, said he hoped the jury sent a message: "No one's above the law. It doesn't matter what position you're in in government. If you do the crime, you have to pay for it."

The 12 jurors and four alternates listened to four days of testimony from 14 witnesses, including several current or former aides and confidants to Kane.

When deliberations began Monday afternoon, Galasso said, a quick show of hands inside the jury room revealed that only a few jurors had doubts about Kane's guilt.

In the 41/2 hours it took for them to reach a unanimous verdict, he said, jurors reread and analyzed the text messages, emails, phone records, and grand jury transcripts that prosecutors presented at trial, and found that they backed up the testimony.

"It was pretty much hard evidence," Galasso said.

The verdict had immediate consequences. Kane announced her resignation Tuesday, completing her fall from a popular Democrat cited as a potential candidate for higher office to a convicted former official facing possible jail time.

While defense lawyers attempted to portray key witnesses as liars whose testimony should be disregarded, Galasso said he believed they were honest. He said the testimony of Joshua Morrow, a political consultant who admitted leaking the documents to a reporter at Kane's request and later plotting a cover-up with her, was especially convincing.

"It was kind of hard because he lied beforehand," he said. "I think he finally came clean. . . . I'm not saying he was lying or not, but for the most part, I think he was telling the truth."

Galasso said texts exchanged between Morrow and Kane and a recording of a phone call Morrow made to a friend were the most convincing evidence.

"Where my story?" Kane texted Morrow in one exchange that Galasso said was strong evidence of her guilt.

In a stroke of bad luck for Kane, the FBI was recording the phone calls of a friend Morrow contacted the day Kane asked him to leak the documents. The FBI wiretap was part of an unrelated investigation, but it allowed prosecutors to play the tape at trial. In it, Morrow described what Kane asked him to do.

"When the voice recording came on, I kind of knew right there, there's a lot of evidence," Galasso said.

Kane's lawyers, he said, "tried blaming everyone else but her in the case."

Although Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy told jurors they could not hold against Kane her decision not to testify, Galasso said he found her lawyers' choice not to call any witnesses surprising.

"We could understand why Kane didn't go on the stand, because it might make her look bad, being cross-examined by the D.A.," Galasso said. "But we were shocked that not one witness was called in the case."

Galasso said he watched Kane closely at she sat at the defense table with four of her lawyers.

"She wasn't reacting to anything," he said. "She wasn't concerned at all."

The Kane trial was Galasso's first time on jury duty.

"I kind of liked it," he said. "Even though it was tense at times, it was a good experience to have."

It was surprising, Galasso said, to hear the details of Kane's crimes.

"If you're that high up, you should know better than to leak classified information," he said. "It just seemed like she didn't plan this out. . . . There was just so much evidence against her. And I felt like she thought she was going to get away with it, so that's why it was so sloppy."

lmccrystal@phillynews.com

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@Lmccrystal