Conviction Stands: ‘First’ Democrat Attorney General Fails To Overturn Her Own Guilty Verdict
She was convicted on two counts of felony perjury, as well as misdemeanors in obstruction and conspiracy.
The judges have ruled that the conviction stands.
Scandals, but their very nature, are twisted affairs that haunt the sufferer. However, the zaniness that is happening in Pennsylvania with former State Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, takes everything to a whole new level of head-scratching, as Third Live has reported today.
“A Pennsylvania appeals court on Friday upheld the conviction” of Kane “for leaking secret grand jury information and lying about it, saying among other things she wasn’t entitled to use evidence of a pornographic email scandal in her defense.” It was a three-judge Superior Court panel that shot down Kane’s “arguments,” as she is still “out on $75,000 bail since her October 2016 sentencing to 10 to 23 months in jail.”
Her conviction on two felony counts of perjury and other misdemeanors remain for the first Democrat AG in PA history to win a strong republican seat. The judges were not messing around with her excuses, as their ruling has clearly conveyed.
The judges did not agree that “all Montgomery County judges” should have been stopped from trying the case, that any of the evidence against her was illegally obtained, or that “she was the victim of selective and vindictive prosecution.” They also did not find that “certain information about grand jury secrecy rules” should have been supplied to the jurors as Kane attested.
All references to a pornography email scandal were also kept out of the courtroom, a nuance that has also frustrated the former AG a great deal. Her office tried the Jerry Sandusky child molestation case and Kane felt that such details were very important.
Now, Kane is out of options unless she appears to the state Supreme Court.
“The mere fact that some judges of a particular court may have some familiarity with a particular case has not been held to be a basis for recusal of an entire bench of judges,” wrote Superior Court Judge Anne Lazarus on the matter.
“This is the law of the case, and as such, our Supreme Court’s finding … is final and binding on this court,” he also added.
He went to opine, “The trial court properly concluded that … the probative value of evidence of pornographic materials discovered in Attorney Fina’s and Attorney Costanzo’s OAG email accounts was speculative and inadmissible, and thus, the trial court properly barred Kane from discussing it during her opening argument.” He said that the “evidence of the Sandusky investigation was irrelevant.”
Kane wanted it known in court and before jurors that “not all information relating to grand jury proceedings is secret.” The court said this would seem to allow her to make public things which were not be outed, however.
Was the information vital to the case as Kane says? It looks as if only the Supreme Court will be able to answer that question, but so far, things are not looking good for the former AG at all.
