Judge denies Philly DA’s request for leniency for a prominent lawyer accused of shooting a man in Center City

A Philadelphia judge has denied a request from the District Attorney’s Office to admit a prominent personal injury lawyer charged with shooting a man outside of a Center City cigar bar into a diversion program.

Municipal Court Judge William Austin Meehan Jr. on Wednesday said he did not believe that the case against Leonard Hill, who police say shot a man in the leg during an altercation in 2023, was appropriate for diversion. He told prosecutors to find another way to move the case forward.

The decision puts District Attorney Larry Krasner, who directed the highly unusual offer to divert an aggravated assault case, at a crossroads. The offer would have allowed Hill to have his case expunged if he completed two years of probation and 30 hours of community service, gave up the legally owned gun police recovered from his Bala Cynwyd house, and donated $25,000 to an anti-violence group, according to court documents.

It was not immediately clear whether Krasner’s office would move toward a potential trial or seek to dismiss the charges.

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Michael Giampietro, an adviser to Krasner who appeared in court Wednesday, said the office respects the judge’s decision and would determine the future of the case after a hearing scheduled for early next month.

Hill — whose face adorns billboards across the region promoting his law firm — did not attend the hearing. His attorney, Fortunato Perri Jr., declined to comment.

Hill was arrested in 2023 after a confrontation led to gunfire outside of Ashton Cigar Bar on the 1500 block of Walnut Street. 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 38-year-old twice — once during their confrontation, and again as he ran away. The second shot struck the man in the calf.

Hill fled the scene and changed his clothes, the documents say. After investigators recovered video of the shooting, the bar manager identified Hill as the gunman, and he was charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and related crimes. He was released on bail to await trial.

The bar manager told police Hill fired in self-defense, according to the court records, and Perri, Hill’s attorney, said the man who argued with Hill had wielded a knife. Hill, he said, was “forced to make a split-second decision to defend not only himself but others in a life-threatening situation.”

It’s rare for people accused in shootings to be offered the chance to go through diversion, otherwise known as the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition, or ARD, a program the DA’s office said generally applies to cases involving relatively minor offenses.

Only three of the 3,700 nonfatal shooting cases resolved through the courts have ended with diversion since 2011, according to data published on the district attorney’s website.

Meehan did not explain his decision in Hill’s case in court Wednesday — but his decision in a similar gun case earlier in the morning offered insight into his thinking.

In that case, a man was charged with recklessly endangering another person after he fired a shot into the air to break up a domestic-related fight outside his home, his attorney said in court. No one was struck. The man owned the gun legally, had no criminal record, and is undergoing treatment for multiple forms of cancer, the lawyer said.

Meehan said he was “not a fan of putting gun cases into ARD,” and that if he admitted one case in which a person fired a gun into the program, others would make the same request.

“I have to defend the program,” Meehan said as he denied the request. “I have to let the next guy who comes in here know he was treated no differently.

“The program was not designed for those types of cases,” he said.

Krasner, who is seeking a third term as the city’s top prosecutor, has said he would like to increase the use of diversion in some gun cases, but most of those initiatives have been centered on illegal gun possession, not shootings.

In an earlier interview, Krasner said he had agreed to offer Hill diversion because of the “unique, highly unusual” nature of the case. He said he believed such an outcome was “the one that advances accountability for this defendant and public safety for Philadelphia.”