Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane smiled briefly but declined comment as she left the Montgomery County Courthouse after selecting jurors that will decide her fate on alleged perjury charges.
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After eight hours of a tedious selection process, six men and six women were selected Monday for the jury panel. Prosecutors and defense lawyers spent the afternoon questioning individual jurors in the judge’s chambers. Kane hugged several family members who were in court to support her.
Jurors will not be sequestered during the trial.
Kane is charged with perjury, making false statements and obstruction in connection with allegedly releasing grand jury information to a newspaper reporter in an effort, according to the prosecution, to embarrass a political rival.
She is accused of seeking revenge against by illegally leaking secret grand jury information.
The feud nonetheless sizzled, and she suspected him of planting a news article a year later that faulted her for not charging anyone in a statehouse bribery sting.
Opening arguments by Kane’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, drew two objections from prosecutors as he “veered closer to the “selective and vindictive prosecution” argument”, Pennlive reports. Fina also was listed as a potential witness at trial.
Kane had given the confidential documents to top assistant Adrian King, who passed them on to campaign consultant Josh Morrow, who got them to the Philadelphia Daily News, she said.
County prosecutors allege they discovered evidence that Kane signed a so-called “secrecy oath” on her second day in office on January 17, 2013, promising her secrecy for statewide investigating grand juries one through 32.
Prosecutors opened their case with testimony from Montgomery County Detective Paul Bradbury, who former District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman assigned to follow up on a special prosecutor’s grand jury probe of the leak.
Exactly one year after the state attorney general was arrested, booked, and fingerprinted in Norristown, Kathleen Kane was in court listening to a deputy prosecutor say she is a criminal because of her need for revenge.
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Kane is being supported in the courtroom by her family – including her parents and sister who is also now a prosecutor in the state attorney generals office.
