Kane seeks to reverse her perjury conviction
Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s fight to reverse her perjury conviction reached the state Superior Court on Wednesday, another milestone in a long march that so far has kept Kane from serving a county jail sentence.
Her appeals lawyer, Joshua D. Lock, appeared before a three-judge panel to ask it to undo Kane’s August 2016 conviction of illegally leaking grand jury information to embarrass a political foe and then lying to investigators about it.
In addressing the court panel Wednesday, Mr. Lock focused on one argument — that the special prosecutor who investigated Ms. Kane had been granted too much power.
Kane, 51, a Democrat from the Scranton area, did not attend Wednesday’s session in Philadelphia. Facing 10 to 23 months in the Montgomery County jail, she remains free while she pursues her appeal in the state courts.
The path to Kane’s
conviction began when the Inquirer disclosed in 2014 that she had secretly ended a bribery investigation involving state legislators from Philadelphia. To retaliate against a former state prosecutor whom she blamed for the story, Kane leaked secret grand jury information to embarrass the prosecutor.
The judge who presided over the grand jury appointed a special prosecutor, Thomas Carluccio, to investigate the leak. He pinned it on Kane and accused her of lying.
Kane initially challenged the legality of Mr. Carluccio’s appointment before her trial in an appeal to the state Supreme Court. The high court rebuffed her 4-1.
Mr. Lock argued Wednesday that another issue remained unresolved: whether Mr. Carluccio had been improperly granted the ability to use subpoenas to force witnesses to testify. Mr. Lock asked the court panel to toss out Kane’s conviction on grounds that Mr. Carluccio’s use of subpoenas tainted his investigation.
Prosecutors argued that stripping special prosecutors of subpoena power would neuter them. On Wednesday, Montgomery County Deputy District Attorney Robert Falin argued a different point: that county prosecutors on their own had turned up the key evidence against Kane apart from Mr. Carluccio’s investigation.
The court made no ruling Wednesday.