A federal judge has found that the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office provided incomplete and misleading information as it sought to overturn the death sentence of a man who killed an East Mount Airy couple inside their home in 1984, then turned off the heat. and left their infant daughter. in to die.
In an open opinion issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg said the administration of Attorney General Larry Krasner had failed to conduct a thorough review of Robert Wharton’s case before asking Goldberg to vacate his sentence. death and order Wharton to serve a life sentence. Goldberg said the review by prosecutors was “flawed” for not mentioning the fact that Wharton had a previous conviction for violently attempting to escape from the City Hall courtroom.
In addition, Goldberg found that Krasner’s office had given a “false” account of her interactions with relatives of the victims, including their daughter, Lisa Hart-Newman, who survived the attack. Goldberg said prosecutors filed documents suggesting the family of Ferne and Bradley Hart had accepted a request to vacate Wharton’s death sentence, which the judge said was “not true.”
As a result, Goldberg admonished the two top supervisors in Krasner’s office, Nancy Winkelman and Paul George, who were involved in the effort to overturn Wharton’s death sentence, saying they violated federal rules of procedure in a way that was ” inflated’ and ‘extraordinary’.
And though he declined to impose specific fines against them — or to impose financial penalties on the District Attorney’s Office, which he also said violated court rules — he ordered that Krasner personally write letters of apology to four of the relatives. of Harts, including their daughter.
Prosecutors “told the court that the Office had ‘carefully reviewed the facts’ when in fact it had not,” Goldberg wrote, adding: “If the District Attorney’s files [documents] in a misleading presentation of the facts, it tends to abuse the power of the Court.”
Jane Roh, spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office, said prosecutors “strongly disagree with Judge Goldberg’s decision and are currently evaluating our options.”
“District Attorney Krasner and the District Attorney’s Office fully support the official conduct and professional ethics of ADA Nancy Winkelman and ADA Paul George, including their handling of this case,” she added.
The opinion was the latest chapter in a years-long appeals process in Wharton’s case.
Wharton, now 59, was convicted along with an accomplice in the 1984 suffocation and drowning death of the Harts inside their East Mount Airy home. The DA’s office had repeatedly opposed Wharton’s efforts to overturn his death sentence, but reversed course in 2019 after Krasner — a death penalty opponent — took office.
Goldberg said at the time that the DA’s office had not provided an adequate explanation for its change of position, and he asked the Attorney General’s Office to provide materials he said the DA’s Office was not sharing after asking Goldberg to order Wharton to be removed from the death penalty.
Among the materials the Attorney General’s Office found were documents describing Wharton’s past escape attempts — which prosecutors, including Winkelman and George, later told Goldberg they were unaware of. In his opinion this week, Goldberg called it “preposterous” for the DA’s Office to say it conducted a careful review of Wharton’s case without knowing about that history.
“Wharton’s escape attempt resulted in a conviction appearing on his criminal history, which can be found by simply typing Wharton’s name into the Pennsylvania Unified Judicial System web portal to reveal a conviction for ‘SEVEN’,” Goldberg wrote. “Yet two supervisors on the committee recommended releasing Wharton’s [appeal] testified that they were not aware of the escape attempt at the time and did not know whether the District Attorney, who approved the concession, was aware of it.
Goldberg went on to criticize prosecutors for what he called their “numerous and extensive explanations” about the office’s conduct on appeal. He also said prosecutors had not considered that failing to provide him with all the relevant facts could jeopardize his ability to make a fully informed decision about Wharton’s fate.
And he said prosecutors misled him by presenting documents suggesting their new position in the Wharton case had been communicated to — and supported by — relatives of the Harts. The decision was communicated to only one family member, Goldberg said, and others — including Hart-Newman, who survived the attack — were “vehemently opposed” to it.
“[T]The Court finds that the District Attorney’s statement regarding its communication with the victims’ family was false and another representation to the Court made after an investigation was not reasonable under the circumstances,” Goldberg wrote.
The judge said Krasner must send his letter of apology to the Harts’ relatives – and present them in court – within 30 days. And he said any future trial before him “must be accompanied by a full and balanced explanation of the facts”.
