DA Larry Krasner’s office unfairly accused ex-prosecutors of misconduct while seeking to secure an exoneration, Philly judge says

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office unfairly accused two former prosecutors of misconduct as it sought to exonerate a man of murder in 2018, a city judge said Thursday — a striking accusation made in a lengthy rebuke the judge issued while also imposing a $120,000 fine.

Common Pleas Court Judge Anne Marie Coyle said the accusations that Krasner’s office leveled seven years ago against Beth McCaffery and Richard Sax — including that they had illegally withheld evidence to secure a wrongful conviction — “had no good faith basis” and were “maliciously intended.”

Coyle also said a culture had been created within Krasner’s office that seeks “to denigrate prior prosecutors, prior administrations, to an unusually extreme level,” something the judge said was a reflection of Krasner’s views about many of his predecessors.

“When that is your purpose, to detect fault instead of evaluating fairness, it lends to an inherent bias and perception,” she said.

And Coyle fined Krasner’s office $120,000 for what she said was a bad faith, yearslong effort to prevent McCaffery from viewing files related to the case as she sought to clear her name — even though prosecutors allowed others to view the files, including researchers from New York University who went on to publish a report repeating the allegations that McCaffery and Sax had committed misconduct.

Krasner, in an interview Thursday night, said he was aware of “the voluminous record of Judge Coyle’s statements and expected order,” and that his office would appeal her decision.

“We are confident that other judges will do the right thing on appeal,” said Krasner, who is in the midst of a campaign for a third term.

McCaffery welcomed the judge’s ruling, saying, “For seven years, I have lived with the weight of false accusations that attacked my integrity and my career.” Coyle, she said, “made it clear: the allegations against me were false.”

Her lawyer, Bryan Lentz, said in court that prosecutors in Krasner’s administration had sought to “cloak themselves in the virtue of being the champions of the wrongly convicted and the wrongly imprisoned,” but had instead “poured sewage into the waters of justice” by making false allegations about McCaffery.

Sax, who had long denied wrongdoing, said Thursday night: “The truth eventually comes out.”

Despite Coyle’s harsh words about how Krasner’s office handled the exoneration, her ruling will almost certainly have no impact on the underlying murder case. Dontia Patterson, whose conviction was overturned after he served 11 years behind bars, settled a lawsuit against the city in 2020 for $1.7 million. And Krasner testified earlier this month that he still does not believe Patterson committed the 2007 slaying, a shooting in which 18-year-old Antwine Jackson was killed in Summerdale.

Still, the decision hands a long-sought victory to McCaffery, who has spent years trying to prove that she had done nothing wrong.

The saga began in 2018, when Krasner’s office filed a motion to dismiss all charges against Patterson. The motion said prosecutors had come to believe that Patterson was likely innocent and had been convicted in part because two trial prosecutors — acting before Krasner took office — had illegally withheld evidence helpful to Patterson.

McCaffery handled Patterson’s 2008 trial that ended in a hung jury, and Sax secured a guilty verdict at a retrial the following year.

Although McCaffery and Sax are not named in the motion, the document said the concealment “occurred over two trials” and added: “Prosecution that deliberately violates these constitutional rights is not law enforcement in any sense — it is a violation of the law.”

In 2020, two years after the motion was made public, McCaffery filed a right-to-know request seeking access to the case file, believing it would prove that she had disclosed everything as required by law.

Krasner’s office denied her request, saying the documents were exempt from public disclosure under Pennsylvania’s open records laws. But McCaffery and her attorneys, led by Lentz, fought the case, saying the district attorney’s office was denying access selectively and in bad faith. They noted that the NYU researchers had been granted access to the files even as McCaffery had been denied.

At a hearing before Coyle earlier this month they called witnesses, including McCaffery, who testified that she kept copious notes and records about her cases and believed they would show that she had acted properly in Patterson’s case.

Another witness was Anthony Voci, Krasner’s onetime chief of homicide, who signed the dismissal motion that helped free Patterson. Voci said he had done “virtually nothing” to confirm the allegations in the document — including the criticism directed at McCaffery — saying he had left much of the preparation to coworkers. Asked whether he believed McCaffery had committed “egregious misconduct,” he said no, despite having signed off on that assertion in the motion.

And Krasner spent four hours on the stand, defending his office and its actions and frequently clashing with Lentz.

Coyle, in her ruling Thursday, said she found McCaffery’s testimony about her note-taking and recordkeeping habits “clear, convincing, and entirely credible” — and suggested that Krasner’s office had a history of “red flags” about its own handling of records in other cases.

And in one of the more remarkable comments, the judge said she believed that Krasner’s office had “deliberately removed” McCaffery’s notes from the file boxes she was given to review while presiding over the open records dispute.

“I don’t believe for one millisecond that the documents at issue weren’t intentionally misplaced,” Coyle said. “I believe they were intentionally misplaced. I believe at this point in time there are certain documents that are — that have been destroyed, omitted, moved, misplaced, what have you.”

She went on to criticize the district attorney’s office for its overall handling of the matter, saying “the level of bad faith that has been demonstrated here is most egregious and worthy of sanctions,” and she ordered the office to pay $10,000 to McCaffery, $10,000 to Sax, and $100,000 to the courts. She also ordered a series of trainings for prosecutors on issues including professional conduct and truthfulness.

Coyle has been at odds with Krasner’s office in the past. In 2018, she removed one of his assistant district attorneys from a probation violation case and unilaterally named a defense lawyer in the room a “special prosecutor.” Her action was later struck down by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

And in 2020, the Superior Court overturned a seven-year prison sentence Coyle imposed on a defendant, saying “a reasonable observer could question whether the judge comported herself in an unbiased and impartial manner,” and citing in part her “animus against the District Attorney’s Office.”

In McCaffery’s case, Coyle said she would issue a written opinion explaining her decision, which she said would be “extensive.” She did not specify a timeline.

It was also unclear how quickly Krasner’s appeal of her ruling might be resolved, meaning a final decision on the fate of the sanctions may not be resolved for some time.