Former Pennsylvania attorney general may soon begin jail sentence

Pennsylvania’s former top prosecutor Kathleen Kane could soon begin serving her jail sentence for perjury after the state’s Supreme Court denied her appeal, with prosecutors asking a judge on Tuesday to revoke bail.

A jury convicted Kane in 2016 of leaking secret grand jury information to the press to embarrass a former state prosecutor, and then lying about it to investigators. She was sentenced to serve 10 to 23 months in county jail.

Kane was the first woman and the first Democrat to be elected as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, a role that first became an elected office in 1980. She resigned two days after the conviction and was released on bail pending her appeal.

On Monday, the state Supreme Court denied Kane’s petition for an appeal hearing.

With appeal options exhausted, the Montgomery County district attorney’s office said it will ask Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy, who presided at Kane’s trial in the county’s Court of Common Pleas, to revoke bail for Kane in a petition on Tuesday.

The judge will then set a time and date to report to jail, Kate Delano, the district attorney’s spokeswoman, said.

Neither Kane nor her lawyer could be reached immediately for comment.

Kane was accused of giving information from a grand jury proceeding in 2013 to a Philadelphia Daily News reporter to retaliate against a former state prosecutor, Frank Fina.

She believed Fina had told the Philadelphia Inquirer about her decision to drop prosecution of a case that Fina had developed against six black Democratic legislators in Philadelphia.

Grand jury information is bound by secrecy. Kane’s lawyers argued that Kane had intended only to legally leak information, and was unaware her aides would also include grand jury material.

Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and David Gregorio