Diamond writes Krasner may have obstructed justice in Dennis Johnson case
U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond, a George W. Bush appointee, has referred Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to the Justice Department for investigation, concluding in a 40-page opinion that the third-term progressive prosecutor may have obstructed justice and engaged in a criminal conspiracy. The Sept. 15 referral stems from the office’s handling of the murder case of Dennis Johnson, who is serving a life sentence for a 2009 fatal shooting at a North Philadelphia convenience store. Krasner said he “respectfully and vigorously” disagrees and intends to appeal.
A rare referral against a sitting district attorney
The referral is unusual enough that legal observers said they could not recall a comparable precedent. “I can’t think of an instance when this has happened before, where a federal judge has referred a sitting district attorney for criminal investigation,” said Temple University law professor Lauren Ouziel, a former federal prosecutor. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board called the situation “untenable,” and the case has been front-page news in the city.
Krasner is among the last progressive prosecutors still in office
Krasner, 65, is a blunt-spoken former civil-rights attorney first elected in 2017 with the financial backing of billionaire investor George Soros. He won his third four-year term last year with 76% of the vote. One of the first progressive prosecutors elected nationwide, he is among the last still in office after voters ousted others amid the post-pandemic crime surge. Krasner has made overturning wrongful convictions a priority from the start.
The flawed filing in the Dennis Johnson case
Johnson was convicted in 2009 for the fatal shooting of Kenyatta Smith and has maintained his innocence. Lawyers from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project have worked with his public defenders to clear him. In 2022, Krasner’s office — which says it has supported about 60 exonerations — joined the effort to obtain a new trial.
According to Diamond’s opinion, the office turmoil began when Matthew Stiegler, a supervisor in the district attorney’s office, assigned the Johnson case to Jaclyn Mason, an experienced lawyer who had been a prosecutor for just four months. Stiegler allegedly told Mason that “if it’s good enough for the Innocence Project, it’s good enough for me,” Diamond wrote, citing court affidavits. Stiegler told Diamond he expected Mason would conduct a full investigation, a claim the judge said he did not find credible. Stiegler did not respond to a request for comment.
In May 2022, Johnson’s lawyers said they had new evidence supporting his innocence, including the recantation of one witness who had identified him as the shooter and a third man who disputed telling a detective he had identified Johnson. In a fall 2022 court filing, Mason wrote that Johnson deserved a new trial because his defense lawyer had not contested the detective’s hearsay testimony. A federal magistrate judge subsequently recommended overturning the conviction on grounds of ineffective counsel.
How supervisors uncovered the errors
After Diamond scheduled a hearing to review the evidence, four district attorney’s office supervisors — not including Stiegler — began re-examining the case. They “started to panic,” Diamond wrote. Two of the supervisors found that Mason’s filing contained major errors, including assertions that contradicted the trial record, Diamond wrote. Worried she would be solely blamed, Mason resigned on June 2 and said Stiegler had “used me to further his personal agenda…regardless of the merits,” according to the opinion.
Stiegler proposed that one of the supervisors tell Diamond the office had discovered mistakes in Mason’s other cases so the judge would view the filing as the work of “one rogue” prosecutor. Later the same day, the four supervisors met with Krasner to seek approval to withdraw the 2022 filing and refer the case to the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office because of conflicts within the district attorney’s office. Diamond wrote that Krasner edited their motion to lessen Stiegler’s apparent involvement before they filed it with the court.
At the same meeting, Krasner told the four supervisors that Stiegler “gave me this really good idea. I think that we should go through Ms. Mason’s cases, find mistakes that she made in other cases, say that this was a pattern by her, and then file something with the Court saying that,” Diamond wrote. The four supervisors rejected the idea. Two weeks before the hearing, Krasner’s office abruptly withdrew its support for a new trial, prompting Diamond to hold hearings where key players in the district attorney’s office testified about what went wrong.
Krasner resisted handing the case to the state attorney general
Krasner also resisted bringing in Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, a Republican. Krasner repeatedly ranted, calling the attorney general’s team “Nazis” and spoke of the need to defend his own turf, saying “We need to protect the office,” according to the opinion. In a court filing in his defense, Krasner said “protect the office” meant “preventing outside bias and outside conflict from unjustly impacting the office’s justice work.”
An outside ethics expert Krasner consulted said neither he nor the district attorney’s office needed to be removed from the case, though Diamond wrote that the expert “ignored critical facts.” A former Missouri prosecutor Krasner hired to review the case said in an affidavit that Johnson’s innocence claim should be rejected.
Diamond concluded Krasner may have obstructed justice
By late June, several Krasner subordinates drafted a letter handing off the case to the attorney general’s office. Krasner reacted angrily and warned that anyone who alerted the court to the discord would face “consequences, whatever they may be,” which some lawyers understood to mean potential firing, Diamond wrote.
“Mr. Krasner’s threat thus could amount to obstruction of justice,” Diamond wrote. “I have also found that Mr. Krasner and Stiegler worked together to try to convince the Four [supervisors] to urge the Court to accept a false narrative. This might amount to criminal conspiracy.” He added: “I have thus reluctantly concluded that Philadelphia’s highest law-enforcement official and one of his top assistants may have violated the law.”
The opinion also disqualified Krasner from further involvement in the Johnson case.
Krasner disputes the findings; reactions split
Krasner cast the referral as politically motivated, invoking various stalled or failed Trump administration prosecutions. “Ask Letitia James, James Comey, the ‘sandwich man’ or the guy who took peeling paint from the reflecting pool what they have to say about accusations,” he said in a statement to the Inquirer.
State Rep. Martina White, the only Philadelphia Republican in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, said Krasner “should absolutely resign.” “It’s an embarrassment to our city,” she said.
Krasner ally Sergio Cea, political director at the advocacy group Reclaim Philadelphia, characterized the judge’s move as a Republican effort “to take down this progressive boogeyman.” The Pennsylvania Innocence Project and other lawyers representing Johnson said their focus remained “on Dennis, whose innocence we firmly believe in, and for whom we will continue to fight.”
Like many progressive prosecutors, Krasner has clashed with the right, but he has also tangled with establishment Democratic power brokers in Philadelphia. There has been speculation he might challenge Mayor Cherelle Parker, a centrist Democrat, in next year’s election.