Kane Trial Verdict: The night of the long knives

Kathleen Kane remained a Rashomon Rorschach test, a carrier of what you believe she carried, a doer of what you believed she did, a sayer of what you believed she said.

 

by Bill Keisling

Defense lawyers and Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele spent nearly four hours on closing arguments in the Kathleen Kane Philadelphia newspaper leak case Monday.

The amount of time they spent should give you some idea of how each side tried to explain and spin to jurors what they had heard and seen over the last week in the Kane trial.

Each side tried to persuade jurors to acquit or convict Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane on nine criminal charges ranging from conspiracy to perjury.

Kane’s lawyer, Seth Farber, spoke to the jury first.

Farber told the jurors a careful read of the evidence didn’t support a guilty conviction.

“When you look at the evidence it doesn’t support what the commonwealth says,” Farber told the jurors.

Rather, he said, the evidence showed that the prosecution’s two main witnesses — former First Deputy Attorney General Adrian King, and political consultant hnsh Morrow — had been more deeply involved than Kane in leaking grand jury material to the Philadelphia Daily News.

King and Morrow, Farber hammered away, were out to protect themselves, and shouldn’t be believed. And the somewhat sketchy evidence of Kane’s involvement, Farber said, couldn’t withstand careful scrutiny.

Nowhere in text messages did Kane herself mention that she was aware that her former top aide, Adrian King, gave consultant Morrow an envelope stuffed with grand jury material, Farber pointed out.

Kane merely was trying to send a legitimate news story to the press, he told jurors.

The evidence failed to show that AG Kane had any specific knowledge of the contents of the envelope that King gave to Morrow, he told jurors.

Farber suggested that Adrian King, and not Kane, was responsible for the contents of the envelope that had been leaked to the Daily News.

The Inquirer and the Daily News, as they had been throughout the trial, loomed large, corrupt and untrustworthy in the closing arguments.

About the only thing that seemed clear and certain in all this was that the sloppy political mud fight created and encouraged by the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News the last few years had only generated anger and heat, and little if any light — as now.

Adrian King had to lie on the stand about his involvement, and blamed his former girlfriend and boss, Kathleen Kane, to protect his own law license and his lucrative income as a private attorney, Farber sedately told the jury.

As for political consultant Josh Morrow, whose testimony under immunity had been so damaging to Kane’s case on Thursday: Morrow had an ax to grind against Frank Fina, Farber said.

A March 2014 Inquirer article reported that Morrow had taken $8,000 in questionable political contributions from an undercover informant. The Inquirer article had damaged Morrow’s reputation, Farber went on. Morrow angrily suspected Fina of planting that article, and it was Morrow, not Kane, who sent text messages speaking of revenge against Fina.

Kane had no such ax to grind, Farber told the jury.

In text messages shown the jury, Farber asked, “Who keeps mentioning Frank Fina? It’s Morrow, not Kane.”

Adrian King and Josh Morrow pointed a finger at each other, and couldn’t agree, Farber went on. Each told lie after lie on the witness stand to protect himself, he said.

Josh Morrow, said Farber, got immunity from prosecutors once, in 2015, and then again, only the previous Wednesday, August 10. “He kept embellishing his story and adding details to keep DA (Kevin) Steele happy,” Farber said.

It was each juror’s responsibility to see through all this, and to acquit Kane, he told them. They had a responsibility not to convict her for the actions of King and Morrow if they had a reasonable doubt about Kane’s involvement, he said.

He warned the jurors not to believe Montgomery County DA Kevin Steele.

“If there’s something Mr. Steele brings up please do not accept it at face value,” Farber told them.

 

Next it was DA Steele’s turn. He’d take nearly two hours reviewing the case for the jurors.

Steele, his career on the line, got up and preached fire and brimstone. At times he whispered, at times he yelled at the jurors.

“We submit to you, there are certain things that have the ring of truth,” he told the jury. Sometimes, in cases like this, he said, “the clouds separate and the sun comes shining though.”

Steele spoke of a conspiracy between the three at the center of the leak case — King, Morrow, and Kane.

DA Steele showed jurors a slide alleging a conspiracy between Kane, King and Morrow.

On the slide, under a big, bold-lettered title — Conspiracy — Steele and his prosecutors had printed all three names: Adrian King, Josh Morrow, and Kathleen Kane.

“When one does it, all do it,” he told the jurors.

But that was also the problem with the honesty of Steele’s case, you couldn’t help thinking.

If Adrian King and Josh Morrow were involved in a criminal conspiracy, why weren’t they charged along with Kane? I had to wonder, listening to Steele. Why was Kane alone charged? That’s a pretty lonely and thin conspiracy.

It was because, Steele made clear between the lines, Kane’s was the pelt he badly wanted.

So, at turns whispering and shouting, Steele walked the jurors through the meaning of conspiracy and the other eight tricky charges against Kane, including obstruction, oppression, false swearing, and perjury.

DA Steele repeatedly reminded his fellow Montgomery Countians of their sworn duty.

“In jury questionnaires you were asked whether you could follow the law,” DA Steele reminded them.

“The other question that was very important to us was whether you could convict the defendant,” Steele said.

There was only one verdict that the evidence and the law dictates, he told them. “That the defendant is guilty.”

 

After closing arguments Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy took almost an hour to instruct the jurors.

The jury began deliberating about 4 pm. It was a hot and long day at the old courthouse.

About 6 pm the jurors filed back into the courtroom with questions for the judge. They asked for help to understand the complicated legal definitions of three of the charges against Kane — obstructing the administration of law, official oppression, and criminal conspiracy at official oppression.

Then they went back to the jury room.

A little before 7 pm, the jurors ordered dinner. Then, at about 8:20 pm, word passed that the jury had reached a verdict. So it only took four hours.

The media rushed back into the courtroom. Kane and her lawyers took their seats at the defense table.

The jurors filed in, and a woman juror in a flowered dress crisply announced “Guilty!” to each of the nine charges.

Kathleen Kane stared straight ahead, showing no reaction.

The courtroom fell strangely quite.

Judge Demchick-Alloy polled the jurors to verify the verdict.

Then the jurors filed out.

The judge declared a recess, and she and the lawyers quickly retreated to her chambers.

Now bedlam erupted in the courtroom. Dozens of reporters stormed up the courtroom aisle, like glassy-eyed cattle, to phone, text, and Internet the news.

I fought my way instead in the other direction, down the aisle to the front of the courtroom, through the pack of stampeding reporters who were leaving in the opposite direction. I went to the front row of benches at the front.

Now there was no one in the courtroom but myself and Kane; Kane’s twin sister, Ellen Granahan; Kane’s bodyguard Mike; and two or three startled-looking sheriff’s deputies, and a bailiff or two. Only seven or eight of us remained in the courtroom. It was dead quite.

It seemed like the whole world had gone off, and blown out of the courtroom, leaving us alone.

Kathleen Kane sat for some minutes by herself at the defense table, in her black dress, her head bowed, her face obstructed by her flowing long brown hair.

Pennsylvania’s 90th attorney general now sat before us, alone, a convicted felon.

But what of Kathleen Kane?

 

Kane’s bodyguard, Mike, stood on the other side of the railing, not far from me. He fidgeted as he looked on at his boss.

Is she all right? I asked him. He shrugged; he didn’t know.

Kathleen’s head was cast low before us, staring at the defense table.

Kathleen twin sister, dark-haired Ellen, stood a little to my left, leaning on the dividing railing, looking with helpless concern at her fallen twin.

Ellen turned and gave me a pained expression.

Little by little reporters began to drift back into the empty courtroom. They stood in knots behind us, talking quietly, finally figuring out to watch Kathleen.

Courthouse workers, meanwhile, came in and began to break down the equipment used by the lawyers during the long hot week of the trial. They began to carry off the projectors, chairs, charts and books, the flotsam and jetsam and detritus of the trial, like stagehands would break down a set.

Was everybody happy now? I asked myself.

A lawyer or two rejoined Kathleen at the defense table. Kane spoke with them, quietly at first, raising her head. She was, I saw, smiling at times.

 

After a few minutes Judge Demchick-Alloy stormed back into the courtroom with the entourage of lawyers and prosecutors.

The judge immediately raised the issue of Kane’s release on bail.

She ordered Kane to immediately surrender her passport. If Kane did not have her passport with her, she said, she was to surrender it to the court no later than noon the next day.

Demchick-Alloy suggested that Kane, the state attorney general with two children, was somehow a flight risk. She shrilly mentioned that AG Kane had traveled to Haiti with her sister Ellen and other staff members in 2014, and had left the AG’s office with “no one watching the store.”

Demchick-Alloy looked down from the bench, addressing Pennsylvania’s attorney general as though Kane was already a convict, lower than the lowest wait staff, or vassal.

Kathleen Kane was her’s now.

Does the Commonwealth have restrictions in regard to bail? Demchick-Alloy asked.

Someone, probably DA Steele, said in a quiet, halting voice that he had no objection to the current bail arrangement. The prosecutors seemed shook up.

The judge said she’d allow Kane free on bail, with “new restrictions.”

Then Demchick-Alloy spoke to Kane:

“There is to be absolutely no retaliation of any kind against any witness in this case, either by your own devices, from your own mouth or your hand, or directing anybody to do anything,” she commanded.

“If there is any kind of retaliation from you, you are incarcerated immediately,” Demchick-Alloy warned the commonwealth’s attorney general.

I guess, I thought, we shouldn’t expect to see Kathleen release any of those 100,000 porno emails sent between state judges and prosecutors any time soon. Those porno emails exchanged by the old boys behind this case; the ones her attorneys were not allowed to mention at trial under penalty of contempt, also per Demchick-Alloy’s pre-trial order.

“Is that clear, Ms. Kane?” Demchick-Alloy asked.

“Yes it is, your honor,” Kane told her.

“Hopefully she’ll understand the importance of this court’s order with respect to retaliating,” Demchick-Alloy chewed on.

 

The courtroom by now had refilled with reporters.

At last the judge dismissed the court, and Kane and her entourage of bodyguards, family, and lawyers came up the aisle.

I don’t know why, exactly, but when our eyes locked I gave Kathleen Kane a thumbs-up.

She shook her head, her lips slightly pursed, her eyes lit with alarm, as if to say, it seemed, They got me. Oh yes they got me.

But I of course can’t be sure exactly what she meant with that nod and that peculiar expression, any more than I understood the meaning of my own thumbs-up.

Kathleen Kane, convicted, as in office, remained a Rashomon Rorschach test, a carrier of what you believe she carried, a doer of what you believed she did, a sayer of what you believed she said.

I’ll have to ask her some day — for the meaning of all this. But for now, she probably didn’t know herself.

None of us standing there did.

 

I made my way outside the courthouse. Black night had fallen.

A podium had been set up besides the wide granite steps in front of the Montgomery County courthouse. The podium had been there all week, but stood unused, until now. Now it bristled with microphones, and was bathed in television camera lights.

Kane’s defense team, led by low-key Gerald Shargel, took the podium.

A great ring of newspaper and TV reporters circled.

“So the verdict, conviction on all counts, was a crushing blow, I’m not going to say otherwise,” Shargel told the cameras. “But we have not lost our resolve. We will continue this litigation, we will continue this fight, because we believe our client has been wrongfully accused of misconduct. The only additional thing I’d say is, over the course of time, over the course of rulings by various courts, we have been denied the opportunity to mount a full defense. But we firmly believe that that day will come.”

Someone asked if the attorney general would resign.

Another reporter asked how the judge’s barring the porno emails from Kane’s defense had tied Shargel’s hands, and what the lawyer would now want to “get out.”

“It’s not a matter of getting something out,” Shargel said, “to make a statement to the press. We, and those of you familiar — and I think that’s all of you — with the history of this case. The so-called ‘Porngate.’ We believe that our defense was compromised. And we will fight that till the end.”

She still maintains that she’s innocent despite the fact that she’s been convicted on all counts? a reporter from the Philly newspapers asked. Apparently nobody had leaked them the answer to that question.

“Look, the jury has spoken,” Shargel said. “And she’s been convicted. And we have to deal with this case on that basis. I can’t make it just go away. And it’s not gonna just go away. When sentencing comes, the question is not whether she did it; it’s a question of the requirement that we respect the jury’s verdict. So that plays an important part in connection with the sentencing. Look, we’re doing everything we can. I’ve been on this case for more than two years. We will keep fighting.”

Did he regret the decision not to call witnesses? he was asked.

“No I don’t regret that decision,” Shargel replied. “Because, obviously, what happened is one of the things that could have happened, and that’s true under any circumstances, no matter what the defense is.

“I was surprised, frankly, that so many in the media,” he continued, “expressed shock that someone would rest without putting on any witnesses. It’s a timeworn strategy. There have been many of my cases where no witnesses appeared, and acquittals have resulted, and the opposite was true. So it’s a strategy. Obviously we thought that it would work. But I’ll be the first person to say we were wrong.”

Have you talked to Kane about going to prison? one seemingly bloodthirsty reporter asked.

Some of them had been waiting years for this night.

“She knows what statutes are involved,” Shargel replied. “She is a seasoned lawyer, specializing in criminal work. As you know, she spent twelve years in the Lackawanna County District Attorney’s office as an assistant district attorney. So this is not something that she is simply awakening to.”

“For my client and her family this is tragic beyond any measure,” he said. “It’s something that she has to deal with. She’s a very strong woman. And she will deal with this.”

Someone asked him, “Mr. Shargle…” (Pronouncing his name so that it rhymes with gargle.)

Months and years of dealing with these often crude, vindictive and petty ignoramuses in the Pennsylvania press now seemed to tell on the lawyer from Manhattan.

“Hold on a second, I’d just make a modest request,” he told the reporters. “And that’s to pronounce my name correctly. So it’s Sharjel,” he says. (Rhymes with Michelle.)

“Was this a fair trial?” I asked Shargel. “Considering the pre-trial motions that prevented you from mentioning Kane’s defense?”

“Let me say it this way,” Shargel replied. “We have arguments to make on whether this trial was fair. We intend to pursue all arguments that are available to us. We’re not going to walk away from any argument. So there you have it.”

 

The defense team disappeared, quickly replaced at the podium and the lights and the microphones by DA Steele and his assistant prosecutor, Michelle Henry.

“It’s a sad day for the commonwealth,” Steele said.

As could be expected, Steele and Henry said they were gratified by the jury’s verdict.

“Twelve people from Montgomery County acted courageously,” Steele said.

The two prosecutors expressed disgust for Kathleen Kane.

“You look at the situation that we had here,” he said, “and we had somebody who thought that she was above the law. And that’s not the case, because no one is above the law.”

Steele charged Kane with conspiracy, I pointed out to him.

Since, as he said, no one is above the law, when might we expect charges to be filed by his office against the other alleged conspirators? Conspiracies, after all, take more than one person.

Why was Kathleen Kane alone charged with conspiracy by the Montgomery County courts and DA’s office?

After all, Steele told jurors, “When one does it, all do it.”

“Well,” Steele said. “We’re gonna review everything. This is a case where we’ve been focused on working through this. There’s a lot of things that we have to look at here.”

Standing around us in the dark at the media event, in the glare of the TV lights, several state and county court officials who’d helped facilitate the media during the trial floated around the scrum of reporters and cameras.

I turned to thank one of the women from the state court’s press office who’d helped me.

I saw that she was crying.

As I walked away from the Montgomery County courthouse a soft summer rain had begun to fall.

 

The next day, August 16, Kathleen Kane would resign as the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.