The Philly DA’s Office is seeking leniency for a prominent lawyer accused of shooting a man outside a Center City bar

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has asked a city judge to allow a prominent personal injury lawyer who has been charged with shooting a man outside a Center City cigar bar to be accepted into a diversionary program — a highly unusual request for a case in which prosecutors had initially filed aggravated assault charges.

If approved, the move — which prosecutors disclosed last week in court filings — would allow Leonard Hill to effectively have his case expunged if he completes two years of probation and 30 hours of community service, forfeits the legally owned gun that police recovered from his Bala Cynwyd house, and makes a $25,000 donation to an anti-violence group, according to court documents.

Hill — whose photo is featured on billboards across the region promoting his law firm — has been accused of firing two shots at a 38-year-old man outside the Ashton Cigar Bar on the 1500 block of Walnut Street in 2023. Hill and a manager at the bar had been trying to separate the man from a woman who said she was being accosted, according to court documents. When the episode spilled outside, Hill and the man got into an argument, the documents say, and Hill shot at the man — once during their confrontation, and a second time as the man ran away. The second shot struck the man in the calf.

Hill went on to change his clothes and did not tell officers who responded to the bar that he had fired his weapon, the documents say. After investigators recovered surveillance video of the shooting and the bar manager identified Hill as the gunman, he was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, possessing an instrument of crime, and related offenses. He was released on bail to await trial.

The bar manager told detectives he believed Hill had fired in self-defense, court documents say. Hill’s attorney, Fortunato Perri Jr., said that the man Hill shot had been wielding a knife — which police did not mention in their arrest paperwork — and that Hill was “forced to make a split-second decision to defend not only himself but others in a life-threatening situation.”

Defendants facing similar charges over the years have rarely been recommended for the diversionary program prosecutors are now seeking for Hill, which is known as Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition, or ARD. On its website, the district attorney’s office said ARD generally applies to people who “are charged with relatively minor offenses.”

And since 2011, according to figures published on the district attorney’s data website, more than 3,700 nonfatal shooting cases have been resolved in the courts. Just three have ended with diversion.

The rate is also low for aggravated assaults, the data show: Only about 1.5% of the more than 48,000 such cases resolved during the same time frame led to a diversionary program.

Krasner has spoken about wanting to increase the use of diversion in some gun cases, particularly for people without criminal histories, because doing so can ensure defendants are exposed to rehabilitative programming without having a criminal conviction remain on their permanent record. Still, many of those efforts — including a program known as Alternative Felony Disposition — have centered on mere possession of illegal firearms, not the use of a gun in a shooting.

Diversion rates in gun-possession cases have increased since Krasner was elected in 2017, but still represent a small fraction of the thousands of prosecutions that are resolved in court each year, his office’s statistics show.

In Hill’s case, Krasner said the decision to offer ARD was “very specifically my decision.”

“It is due to unique, highly unusual information about the case, much of it obtained after the arrest occurred, and I believe this outcome is the one that advances accountability for this defendant and public safety for Philadelphia,” he said in an interview. “ARD is the resolution that promotes accountability for the defendant while advancing public safety for Philadelphians. In the event Mr. Hill acts improperly and in violation of the terms of ARD, he will be prosecuted in the future.”

Krasner declined to specify which aspects of the case he viewed as highly unusual or answer additional questions ahead of a hearing in the case that is scheduled for later this month.

Perri, Hill’s lawyer, said: “The decision to resolve this matter with a diversion program highlights the understanding that my client acted out of a legitimate need to ensure safety in an extremely dangerous situation. This resolution allows him to move forward while recognizing the serious nature of the incident.”

Keisha Hudson, head of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, the largest indigent defense organization in the state, said in an interview Wednesday that she could not recall a single instance in which a Defender client accused of shooting someone had been offered diversion. She said that the recommendation in Hill’s case appeared emblematic of a criminal justice system that has long treated poor defendants differently from those with money — and that her attorneys would “absolutely” use it as an example in the future as they advocate for similar outcomes for the people they represent.

“We are not afforded that leniency, because our clients don’t have the right connections and reach and power,” Hudson said. “Any consideration afforded to another defendant should be afforded to clients represented by the Defender.”

It is not certain that the request to admit Hill to ARD will be approved. Hill and the district attorney’s office are due to appear before Municipal Court Judge William Austin Meehan on Feb. 19 to address the case, and Meehan is not obligated to accept the recommendation, though it is rare for judges to issue rejections.

If he does deny the request, however, prosecutors would have to decide whether to pursue the case further and seek to convict Hill — which could endanger his law license — or drop the proceedings altogether, eliminating any future criminal consequences for the episode.