‘His removal from the public is necessary’

Kareem Harper-El sentenced to 36 to 72 years in state prison

The prosecutor who won the conviction of a Philadelphia man for engineering a brutal and violent home-invasion robbery that had set up the victim by a prostitute called on the judge overseeing the case to order his “removal” from the community to protect it from his repeated criminal conduct.

“This defendant has demonstrated time and again that he is a complete tyrant to the residents of Pennsylvania,” former Chester County Assistant District Attorney Kathleen D. Lewis wrote in a pre-sentencing memo about Kareem Harper-El, who was found guilty of the robbery at a Pennsbury home in October.

Harper-El’s arrest and conviction for the crime — which left the victim beaten, bloodied, and fearing for his life — even after numerous juvenile arrests starting in 1996 when he was 13 and ending with a 15year term in state prison for shooting a police officer, “clearly indicates his unwillingness to be a law-abiding citizen and poses a serious threat to the public.”

Lewis listed seven convictions or adjudications on Harper-El’s record.

“The crime for which the defendant is to be sentenced created the potential for deadly violence,” Lewis told Common Pleas Court Judge Ann Marie Wheatcraft in her March memo before she left the D.A.’s Office, returning Friday to handle HarperEl’s sentencing. “The behavior of the defendant demonstrates that his removal from the public is necessary.”

Lewis recommended a sentence of 45 to 90 years behind bars at a state correctional institution. (Lewis now works for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.)

Instead, Wheatcraft, who oversaw Harper-El’s trial last year after months of delays caused by his manipulation of the intricacies of the criminal justice system, sentenced him to a total term of 36 to 72 years of incarceration on charges of robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, conspiracy, and illegal possession of a firearm.

Harper-El, 40, has been held in Chester County Prison since his arrest by State Police Trooper Stefano Gallina in December 2018, about four months after the robbery.

Harper-El’s attorney, Ryan Grace of the West Chester firm of Bellwoar and Kelly,