Judge P. Kevin Brobson raised a similar question in court.
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She was unavailable for comment, but since the investigation broke, she says she has broken no laws, and that her prosecution was engineered by former assistants in her office she exposed for exchanging pornographic and racially insensitive emails.
Kane said in a statement last month that she wanted guidance from the court – although recently unsealed court documents show the state’s highest court told her past year that she was not prevented from “appropriate disclosure” of the emails. “But she is concerned about legal exposure in doing so”.
As all this took place, Kane was working out of her office in downtown Scranton.
Furber will preside over all pretrial hearings, rule on motions submitted to the court by prosecutors and defense attorneys and will ultimately preside over the trial against Kane, which is not expected to begin until 2016.
“But just because I want these emails made public doesn’t mean that I can make them public at this time”. These protective orders specifically shield two of the email distributors we now know, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s release, who are at the core of this email chain.
“On the one hand, should I simply withdraw my appeal to Commonwealth Court, agree with the Philadelphia Inquirer that these records are public and, therefore, covered by the RTK law, and release them, in the absence of a ruling by the Commonwealth Court, nothing stops the issuing courts in these counties from enforcing the protective orders against me under the theory that the act of withdrawing our appeal was designed to retaliate against those protected by their orders”. Kane’s spokesman Chuck Ardo says agents from Ferman’s office returned to the AG’s Harrisburg offices Thursday morning.
“The hearing officer did not consider the wider policy implications of releasing these emails and how that might affect the privacy rights of every commonwealth employee”, Mr. Ardo said.
“We are talking about smutty emails people sent to each other for their own amusement”, Mr. Knorr said.
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But lawyers for the Philadelphia Inquirer, which requested the e-mails under the Right-to-Know law, said a number of factors about the messages “tip” them into the realm of public documents: their senders and recipients (state employees), the volume of the messages (said to be in the thousands), and the fact that they violate an office policy against passing around suggestive, pornographic, or obscene material.
