Federal Judge Refers Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner to DOJ Over Handling of Murder Case Appeal

A federal judge took the rare step Tuesday of asking federal prosecutors to look into whether Philadelphia's top law enforcement official broke the law.

U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond referred District Attorney Larry Krasner and his Conviction Integrity Unit chief, Matthew Stiegler, to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Diamond wrote that evidence from recent hearings could support charges of false statements, perjury, obstruction of justice or conspiracy, according to court documents cited by CBS News, NBC News and Fox News.

Nobody has been charged. This is a referral, not an indictment. The U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment, and no investigation has been publicly confirmed.

What the case is actually about

The dispute grew out of Dennis Johnson's push to overturn his 2009 conviction for the second-degree murder of Kenyatta Smith. In 2022, Krasner's office told the court Johnson deserved habeas relief because his trial lawyer provided ineffective assistance, according to the Associated Press, as carried by WRAL.

Diamond began holding evidentiary hearings in May, per NBC Philadelphia, after conflicts of interest surfaced involving Stiegler's role in the case. Four prosecutors in Krasner's office objected to how the case was being litigated and pushed to hand it off to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office, according to court documents cited by NBC Philadelphia and CBS News.

Krasner refused. He told staff someone from his office needed to stay involved to "protect the office," the documents show. The prosecutors who objected argued that was itself the problem: their job was to evaluate the merits of Johnson's claim, not shield the DA's office's reputation.

Diamond's memo goes further. He wrote that Krasner warned there would be "consequences" for any employee who alerted the court to the conflict, and that Krasner and Stiegler pressured staff to present what the judge called a "false narrative" to the court, a characterization that, if borne out, "would amount to criminal conspiracy," per NBC News.

"I have thus reluctantly concluded that Philadelphia's highest law enforcement official and one of his top assistants may have violated the law," Diamond wrote in the memo, which multiple outlets, including Fox News and CBS News, quoted directly.

Fox 29 Philadelphia reported that Diamond's findings also point to Krasner and Stiegler trying to shift blame onto a former assistant DA for errors in a legal filing after the office withdrew a concession it had made in Johnson's favor. That former ADA and her attorney declined to comment when contacted by Action News.

Krasner disqualified, not the whole office

Diamond disqualified Krasner and Stiegler personally from the Johnson case but stopped short of removing the entire DA's office, according to Fox News and CBS News. The office can keep handling the matter under different supervision. It's not yet clear which prosecutor takes it over, per CBS News.

Krasner's response

Krasner pushed back hard. "I respectfully and vigorously disagree with the court's findings of fact and conclusions of law," he said in a statement carried by every outlet covering the ruling. "I look forward to appealing to the higher court as soon as the law allows. This remains a pending matter, which limits for now my and my office's ability to respond in the media."

Krasner is legally constrained from mounting a full public defense while the matter is active. He has signaled he intends to appeal Diamond's findings rather than accept them. Stiegler did not respond to messages seeking comment, according to CBS News and WRAL.

Supporters of conviction-integrity work would point out that reviewing old convictions for prosecutorial or defense errors is a legitimate function that reform-minded DAs across the country, not just Krasner, have built entire units around. A wrongful murder conviction, if that's what this is, is exactly the kind of case such units exist to catch. Diamond's ruling doesn't resolve whether Johnson's underlying claim about his 2009 conviction has merit. It addresses who gets to argue it going forward.

The bigger pattern

This isn't happening in isolation. Krasner, first elected in 2018 and re-elected last year, has faced mounting friction with Pennsylvania courts over his office's post-conviction practices, according to NBC News. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered this summer that the state Attorney General review any case where Krasner's office seeks to overturn a conviction. Separately, the state Supreme Court has been weighing the future of an impeachment trial tied to Krasner, according to Fox News.

Whether the U.S. Attorney's Office opens a formal investigation is the next thing to watch. So is Krasner's promised appeal of Diamond's disqualification order, and whether Dennis Johnson's decade-plus fight over his conviction moves forward under a new prosecutor while the fight over who mishandled it plays out separately in federal court.