Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane asked Friday that a judge from outside Montgomery County be appointed to preside over her criminal trial there, saying the entire county bench could be biased against her.
Her lawyers argued that the judge assigned to the case, Wendy Demchick-Alloy, as well as the other judges in the county, were too close to three county judges who the attorneys said are plainly hostile to Ms. Kane.
Those judges, the lawyers said, are William Carpenter, Carolyn Carluccio, and Risa Vetri Ferman.
As Ms. Kane's filing noted, Judge Carpenter launched the investigation into a leak of grand jury information that led to Ms. Kane's arrest; Judge Carluccio is married to lawyer Thomas Carluccio, whom Judge Carpenter named as a special prosecutor to lead the leak probe; and Judge Ferman, who began serving as a judge in January, was the district attorney who built upon Thomas Carluccio's work, which led to Ms. Kane's being charged last year.
Ms. Kane's lawyers said there would be "no public faith in a fair and impartial outcome" if any of the 22 judges on the county bench presided over her trial.
The first woman and Democrat to be elected state attorney general, Ms. Kane is to stand trial in August on charges of perjury, false swearing, obstruction, official oppression, and conspiracy. She has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors say she leaked confidential information to the Philadelphia Daily News in a bid to embarrass an enemy and then lied about her actions under oath. Montgomery County prosecutors pursued the case because the grand jury was sitting in Norristown.
At a news conference last year, Judge Ferman said Ms. Kane leaked information from a 2009 grand jury investigation to smear a former state prosecutor, Frank Fina. Judge Ferman said Ms. Kane arranged for the leak in 2014 because she blamed Mr. Fina for leaking to the Inquirer information for articles damaging to her.
Ms. Kane has acknowledged she approved giving the material about Mr. Fina to the Daily News, but she said she did so in a lawful manner.
In their 62-page filling, Ms. Kane's lawyers also asked that the case against her be thrown out because she was "the victim of selective and vindictive prosecution." This was presumably a reference to the fact that while Ms. Kane is charged with engineering an illegal leak, no charges have been filed against others who leaked hurtful information about her.
Her filing merely asserted that she had been unfairly singled out and did not present an argument for why that was so. In fact, her brief, after making the assertion, contained 20 blank pages labeled "redacted."
Ms. Kane's lawyers declined to comment immediately. According to prosecutors, the defense team told Judge Demchick-Alloy it wanted more time to replace the blank pages with a full written argument should the lawyers decide to pursue a selective-prosecution argument.
In their pleading, the lawyers also argued that the case should be dismissed because Thomas Carluccio's original appointment was "unlawful and unconstitutional."
Ms. Kane's lawyers argued that Mr. Carluccio's work was without legal foundation and thus any subsequent evidence dug up by the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office is also tainted as "fruit of the poisonous tree."
"The evidence generated through the investigating grand jury — and the derivative evidence — must be suppressed and the charges in this case must be quashed in their entirety," wrote Gerald L. Shargel of the Winston & Strawn law firm in New York City.
Though her brief Friday did not dwell on it, Ms. Kane mustered a previous challenge to the investigation, and the state Supreme Court rejected her arguments in a 4-1 vote.
Ms. Kane's lawyers also contended that prosecutors had failed to give the defense a detailed accounting of the precise alleged lies and actions that underpin the charges of perjury and other offenses. Their "willful" failure to detail her wrongdoing, they said, warranted dismissal of the case.
Prosecutors filed their own pretrial motions Friday, a much briefer submission. Among other requests, they asked the judge to order the defense to turn over to prosecutors the details of any alibi-related defense.
Mr. Shargel and the other members of the defense team, including Ross M. Kramer and Seth C. Farber, and District Attorney Kevin R. Steele and his team, including prosecutors Thomas W. McGoldrick and Michelle A. Henry, have until next Friday to file rebuttals to each side's pleadings.
First Published: March 5, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
