Lawsuit filed to unseal records in Leslie Acosta case
HARRISBURG — Five years after quietly pleading guilty in an embezzlement scheme, much of the case against former state Rep. Leslie Acosta remains under a shroud of secrecy.
More than half of the court records in Acosta’s case are sealed, despite widespread criticism that the onetime Philadelphia Democrat was allowed to remain in office, and even run for reelection uncontested, because of the unusual level of secrecy surrounding her 2016 conviction.
Three Pennsylvania media organizations — Spotlight PA, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and LNP|LancasterOnline — are asking a federal court to unseal those records, highlighting the public’s right to view judicial proceedings and records in criminal cases and arguing there is a high burden for restricting access.
“These interests are particularly stark in cases of public corruption,” lawyers for the news organizations argued in their unsealing motion, filed Feb. 16 in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. “Without transparency in such cases, the public’s faith in the judicial system and government as a whole is jeopardized.”
Acosta did not return calls seeking comment. Her former lawyer, who has since died, said in the past he sought to shield details of her case because she feared for her safety after cooperating in the federal investigation of the embezzlement, which involved other highprofile names in Philadelphia’s political world.
But it is unclear why so much of the case remains sealed, even after the investigation has ended.
Federal prosecutors in the
United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which handled Acosta’s case, said in court papers last week that they wanted to review the sealed records, but signaled they might be open to potential public release.
From the start, the secrecy surrounding Acosta’s conviction was notable.
Between 2008 and 2012 — several years before she became a legislator in 2015 — prosecutors said Acosta helped her onetime boss embezzle thousands of dollars from a mental health clinic in Philadelphia that served low-income residents. The clinic was founded by Renee Tartaglione — who hails from one of Philadelphia’s well-known political families — and Tartaglione’s husband, Carlos Matos, another political fixture in the city.
According to court filings, Acosta received thousands of dollars in checks from the clinic for work she did not perform, then cashed them and gave the money to Tartaglione.
The public only learned about her case after The Philadelphia Inquirer revealed in September 2016 that the North Philadelphia Democrat had quietly pleaded guilty earlier that year and had agreed to testify against Tartaglione, who was convicted in 2017.
Court filings involving her guilty plea, as well as sentencing documents, were under seal.
Prosecutors never announced her conviction, and Acosta did not tell her constituents or colleagues in the state House of Representatives.
By the time the public learned about her case, it was too late for a challenger to get on the ballot to oppose her reelection. Acosta ran uncontested, winning a second term in November 2016. But she received a cold reception from her colleagues, who pressured her to step down, which she did in January 2017.
Paula Knudsen Burke, a Pennsylvania-based lawyer for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press as part of its Local Legal Initiative, said there is a high burden for sealing judicial proceedings and records, and those seeking to do so must show that such secrecy outweighs the public’s First Amendment and common law rights of access.
“Because most of the proceedings and documents in this case were sealed, Acosta was able to keep her involvement in a criminal scheme to defraud a mental health clinic in one of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods hidden from her constituents until her reelection was all but guaranteed,” wrote Burke, who is representing the media organizations and working with the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic.
The media organizations are asking that 23 of the total 40 docket entries in Acosta’s case be unsealed, or at least released with redactions.
If the release is denied, the lawyers are requesting that the court make public its reasoning, noting “access educates the public about the judicial system, encourages the perception that court proceedings are conducted fairly, and allows for observation and evaluation of prosecutorial performance.”
Hugh Newell Jacobsen, an award-winning Washington architect whose deceptively simple designs for homes and prominent public buildings honored the values of traditional styles while cleverly infusingmodernist sensibilities, died Thursday at an assisted living center in Front Royal, Va. He was 91.
The cause was complications from COVID-19, said his son John Jacobsen. Another son, Simon Jacobsen, said the cause was reoccurring pneumonia and unrelated to the coronavirus.
Throughout a career that included high-profile commissions around the world, Hugh Newell Jacobsen was best known for residential designs that combined the familiar forms of early American architecture with modern architecture’s emphasis on simplicity and clean lines.
Mr. Jacobsen’s hallmark was often described as a Monopoly
house because of its resemblance to the piece from the board game. The light, airy, steeply gabled pavilions were not nearly as easy to create as they might have appeared.
“Designing is like giving birth to a barbed-wire fence,” he often quipped.
He won some of his profession’s highest accolades; Architectural Digest inducted him into its hall of fame; and he was a regular member of the AD100, the magazine’s annual list of the world’s top architects and designers.
With a rakish sweep of white hair, impeccably tailored suits and patrician bearing, Mr. Jacobsen moved easily among such wealthy clients as former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, actors Meryl Streep and James Garner, and arts patron and philanthropist Rachel “Bunny” Mellon.
Mr. Jacobsen, who was mentored by modernist masters Louis Kahn and Philip Johnson, began applying their philosophies about order and clarity as soon as he opened his solo architecture practice in Washington in 1958. In time, more than 120 houses in the Georgetown neighborhood were refurbished or built by him.
He also undertook major public projects. He created the addition under the West Terrace of the U.S. Capitol; restored two Smithsonian museums (the Renwick Gallery and the Arts and Industries Building); and renovated the
Talleyrand building, part of the U.S. Embassy complex in Paris, and the Spaso House, the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow. He designed buildings at the University of Michigan, University of Oklahoma, Georgetown University and his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Maryland.
Mr. Jacobsen’s reputation flourished in the 1980s after Onassis hired him to design her home on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. Built in 1981, Red Gate Farm caused an uproar in the island community because of fears his modern design would look out of place.
But the understated house was more New England saltbox than brutalist concrete fantasy. In describing his visit to the house, author Robert T. Littell wrote, “There was something about the inside of both [the main and guest] houses that made you feel you were being wrapped in a big robe of clean, soft, white terry cloth.”
In his best-remembered residential projects, Mr. Jacobsen’s trademark became a series of steep-roofed pavilions unfurling like a telescope. His houses had elongated windows to draw natural light into the space and pervasive white walls to reflect it throughout the room.
“If there is anything that is consistent in my work, it is my absolute obsession with controlling light,” he once told the Washington Star. “I have found that I can hold light in a space almost as you can fill up a glass with liquid.”
Hewing to the modern aesthetic, Mr. Jacobsen’s homes lacked ornamentation — no molding, baseboards or trim. Canister lights were a consistent motif. Bookshelves were designed on a grid to resemble antique wooden egg crates.
Often copied, Mr. Jacobsen’s bookshelves were precisely crafted to be elegant as well as functional. Each cube was 12 inches wide, so books could be removed without starting an avalanche. Filling the shelves with a library turned them into a wall of color. (But don’t leave them empty, the architect begged, or “they’ll look like a liquor store going out of business.”)
In 1998, Mr. Jacobsen was one of the few architects selected to participate in Life magazine’s Dream House series. The editors commissioned architects to design beautiful yet affordable houses for aspiring middleclass homeowners. The mailorder home plans sold for about $600 for a house with a projected construction cost of $200,000.
More than 900,000 Jacobsen plans sold, and houses created from the plans were built from South Korea to Argentina.
“I’ve been an architect for the rich, I’ve been a ‘Jackietect’ — that’s what one of my sons has called me since I did Mrs. Onassis’ Martha’s Vineyard house — but to do a house that people can reasonably build, that’s how every architect wants to be remembered,” Mr. Jacobsen told Life.