Wednesday, December 18, 2019

The D.A.'s Firewall Breaks

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

Dear Jane Roh, I've got some bad news for you and your boss.

I know that part of your job as District Attorney Larry Krasner's $118,000 a-year "communications director" is to never respond to any of my questions. That's because your main objective is to prevent any of the critical Big Trial stories about your boss from migrating to The Philadelphia Inquirer, or any other media outlet.

For months, you've been quite successful at your mission. But now that's over.

This week, three Big Trial posts that take a critical look at your boss, Progressive Larry Krasner, were published in their entirety on lawenforcementtoday.com, [LET] a national police website with 38,600 followers on Twitter and about 10,000 followers on linkedin. The result: a national audience is finally discovering how radical and reckless D.A. Krasner really is.

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Monday, December 16, 2019

Lawyers For Maureen Faulkner Attack D.A. Krasner's Radical Past

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

It looks like the radical past of  former defense lawyer Larry Krasner may have caught up with District Attorney Larry Krasner.

Krasner's activities as a left-wing activist  nearly 20 years ago are now at the heart of a legal battle in state Supreme Court over whether the D.A. should be disqualified from ongoing appeals of the 1982 first-degree murder conviction of celebrity cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

In the latest volley, lawyers for Maureen Faulkner, the widow of Jamal's murder victim, the late Police Officer Danny Faulkner, are spotlighting Krasner's radical past as a "movement attorney" and "strategist" on behalf of R2K, a legal collective organized by the National Lawyers Guild. The left-wing outfit has long listed Jamal as an active board member. The guild also proclaims that it's dedicated to freeing Jamal and other "political prisoners" who are victims of the "prison industrial complex."

But in state Supreme Court, Faulkner's attorneys claim that the details of Krasner's radical past "demonstrate an obvious and overwhelming appearance of impropriety and conflict of interest." Krasner, Faulkner's attorneys say, has both "an ulterior agenda and a fixed bias in favor of Mumia Abu-Jamal."

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Tuesday, December 10, 2019

D.A. Krasner Loves Two-Time Killers

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

When it comes to two-time killers, Larry Krasner, our radical new D.A., has a heart full of mercy.

On Saturday, I published a blog post  about how the D.A.'s office decided  to drop felony charges against John Kane, a two-time killer who, after running a stop sign, was caught by police with drugs and guns.

Kane was looking at a return trip to the slammer for violating the terms of parole from his most recent murder rap. But Kane had already been found guilty in absentia in the Traffic Division of Municipal Court, and got hit with a $25 traffic ticket for running that stop sign. That prompted our merciful D.A. to apparently decide that Kane had suffered enough with that ticket, and he didn't want to subject the two-time killer to the risk of double jeopardy. So the D.A.'s office promptly decided to drop the felony charges in Common Pleas Court against Kane, and a killer who previously shot two men to death walked out of court a free man.

On Monday, Julie Shaw of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a story about how the D.A.'s office wants to vacate two-first degree murder convictions for Derrick Ragan, an inmate on Death Row. Krasner wants Ragan to plead guilty to two counts of third-degree murder, so he can get a reduced sentence and be eligible for parole in six years.

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Where Football Meets Fraud: Dick Anderson On Jerry Sandusky

Former Penn State assistant football coach Dick Anderson appeared on the new "Search Warrant" podcast to talk about his former teammate, fellow coach and longtime friend, Jerry Sandusky.

During the hour-long interview, Anderson answered questions from hosts John Snedden, a former NCIS special agent; Anna Mydlarz, a former undercover Buffalo detective; and Tom Purcell, a former Canadian Pacific police captain.

Anderson has been an inside witness to the travesty known as the Penn State sex abuse scandal. He talks about what he's seen on the podcast headlined "Football Meets Fraud" that can be heard here.
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Saturday, December 7, 2019

D.A. Lets A Two-Time Killer Walk

Two-Time Killer John Kane
By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

The cops pulled a man over last year for running a stop sign and discovered that he had a criminal record. John Allen Kane had already shot two men to death. When the cops conducted a search, they found drugs and a gun.

Kane was charged with a half-dozen crimes, including possession of firearms, a first degree felony, and carrying firearms without a license, a third-degree felony, in addition to three drug charges. He was also charged with running a stop sign, a summary offense punishable with a fine.

Because of the criminal charges, Kane was looking at a return to the slammer for violating the terms of probation from his most recent murder rap. But on May 20th, when his case came to Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, something strange happened. Because of a $25 traffic ticket from the Traffic Division of Philadelphia Municipal Court dating back to last year for running that stop sign, the D.A. decided to drop the guns and drugs charges against Kane in Common Pleas Court.

Why that happened involved conflicting messages being sent out by D.A. Larry Krasner over the issue of how to treat felons facing charges stemming from the same incident in two different courtrooms.

But that conflict didn't change the bottom line in the Kane case, namely that thanks to a $25 traffic ticket, a two-time killer walked out of court a free man.

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