He said based on his experience he believes women jurors generally are tougher on women defendants and men typically are more sympathetic to females standing trial. In addition to the felony perjury charges, she is charged with several misdemeanors, including obstruction, official oppression and conspiracy.
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Prosecutors say she oversaw the leak of confidential information to a Philadelphia newspaper to embarrass a political rival, and then lied to a grand jury investigating her.
Kathleen Kane’s perjury and obstruction trial comes a year after she was indicted over the 2014 leak to a Philadelphia newspaper.
But in a dramatic opening line, Henry began with the alleged motive: “Revenge”, she said.
Ms. Kane, 50, was charged previous year after prosecutors said she had illegally leaked secret grand jury information to embarrass former state prosecutor Frank Fina – and later lied about it.
Kane directed a trusted top aide in her department and her former campaign consultant to turn over that information to a news reporter in an attempt to embarrass Fina, who had moved on to serve as an assistant district attorney in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, according to Henry.
She also highlighted what she called the five biggest lies from Kane while under oath in an effort to cover up the leaks.
And Kane made “a couple honest mistakes” when testifying before the grand jury, but she did not lie, Shargel said.
Shargel described his client as the daughter of hardworking parents who was “not born with a silver spoon in her mouth”.
But the attorney general’s defense team is arguing otherwise, and pointed out that Kane’s deputies who were named as actually handling the secret documents that were released to the Philadelphia Daily News are going to be key prosecution witnesses against her – and at least one of them has been granted immunity.
Kane was the first woman elected to the state’s post.
The prosecutor said of the alleged illegal leak, “she knew it was wrong, she knew it was against the law, she didn’t care”. Dressed in a cream and black tweed suit, she occasionally leaned in to speak with her attorney, Gerald Shargel.
Steele has been laying the foundation for his case against Kane, having county Detective Paul Bradbury read to the jury much of the evidence that he found in his investigation to bring charges against the state’s top prosecutor. They included former Kane aides to Montgomery County Judge William Carpenter, who presided over the statewide grand jury that recommended charging Kane, and former Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery, who resigned in 2014 in a scandal over his racy emails that passed through attorney general servers. Mr. Morrow had already given the grand jury materials to the reporter, Ms. Henry said.
Now the state’s Inspector General, Beemer was special counsel and chief of the AG’s criminal prosecution division when he met with agents Michael Miletto and David Peiffer to discuss the 2009 Mondesire grand jury.
Kane said the oaths she recalled signing dealt with ongoing and new grand jury investigations, according to a transcript of her testimony before the grand jury.
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Kane nonetheless appeared confident seated at the defense table Monday beside a five-person legal team led by NY trial lawyer Gerald Shargel, perhaps best known for winning an acquittal for mob boss John Gotti. “Her words”, Henry said. “I was never sworn into any grand jury”.
