Candidates debate handling of AG scandal
John Morganelli
Joe Peters
Sen. John Rafferty
Josh Shapiro
Stephen Zappala
PHILADELPHIA – The five men seeking to become Pennsylvania’s next top prosecutor all said at a forum Tuesday that Attorney General Kathleen Kane has mishandled the pornographic email scandal that has roiled her agency. They also proposed how they’d improve office morale and overhaul its operations.
The three Democrats and two Republicans running in the April 26 primary spent about 90 minutes fielding questions during a forum sponsored by the Philadelphia Bar Association. Kane, a Democrat, recently announced she will not seek a second term while she fights criminal allegations she leaked secret grand jury material and lied about it.
The first question concerned the email ring that has caused dozens of agency employees to be fired or disciplined, led one Supreme Court justice to abruptly retire and has a second facing ethics charges, and largely defined Kane’s term in office as she has disclosed some but not all of the salacious and offensive content.
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, a Democrat, criticized Kane’s decision to bring in former Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler to review a vast trove of office emails, a process that is underway.
“You don’t need a special prosecutor to investigate bad behavior,” Morganelli said.
Republican candidate Joe Peters, an ex-federal prosecutor who formerly served as Kane’s official spokesman, said he would have already released much of the material, saying he would “start from the assumption that the citizenry who elected you, and the media, deserve as much sunshine as possible.”
Sen. John Rafferty, R-Chester, said Kane may have released to Gansler “sensitive information” and argued the state is home to lawyers who would have been qualified and capable of performing the review.
Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said he would have disclosed “all the emails” and determined if criminal acts or ethical violations occurred.
The scandal is “not complicated” and “comes down to leadership,” said the other Democrat, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala.
“I don’t see a crime, and absent a crime I would send these emails to the appropriate agency,” Zappala said.
All five described themselves as at least qualified supporters of the death penalty at a time when Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has imposed a temporary moratorium on executions.
Shapiro said he supports it for “the most heinous of crimes” but believes the current system is broken and needs to be fixed. Zappala said he has an experienced team to ensure it’s applied evenhandedly, but added he is concerned that 23-hour-a-day solo confinement for death row inmates may violate the constitutional proscription against cruel and unusual punishment. Morganelli said he supports the death penalty, calling it “not fun work,” but said he might support new limits on who qualifies.
Rafferty said he supports capital punishment “in exigent circumstances,” including killing a police officer in the line of duty, and Peters said “it’s about the victim” so it should “be on the books for those very, very limited cases.”
The candidates split by party when asked if they would defend a state statute if they personally did not believe it was constitutional, as Kane did when she declined to defend a state law banning gay marriage. Peters and Rafferty said they would defend such a law despite their personal reservations, while Shapiro, Zappala and Morganelli all argued it is within the attorney general’s discretion to say no.