Jury selected in case against Kane
PHILADELPHIA — A jury of six men and six women was selected Monday to decide the fate of Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, clearing the way for opening arguments today in Norristown.
“We have our jury,” Common Pleas Court Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy announced after a nine-hour selection process.
She said Kane’s trial on perjury, conspiracy, obstruction and other charges would last a week.
Earlier in the day, the judge read a list of people who will either be witnesses at the trial or whose names may come up in testimony. The list included judges, prosecutors, political figures, reporters and former or current staffers in Kane’s agency. She asked jurors to disclose if they knew any of those named.
The list of names includes:
- Frank Fina, a former top state prosecutor with whom Kane was feuding. She is accused of seeking revenge against him by illegally leaking secret grand jury information.
- Former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery. He resigned from the court after it was revealed that he had exchanged hundreds of pornographic e-mail messages on state computers.
- Former Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman, who charged Kane last year and now is a county judge.
- Montgomery County Judge William Carpenter, who oversaw an investigative grand jury into the alleged leak.
- Thomas Carluccio, the special prosecutor who led the grand jury investigation.
- Tyron Ali, the undercover operative in a sting investigation involving Democratic elected officials from Philadelphia. Kane, a Democrat, secretly shut down the investigation, which had been launched by Fina.
- Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, who later prosecuted and won convictions against officials caught in the sting that Kane declined to pursue.
The potential jurors also were asked whether they would have difficulty convicting or acquitting Kane based on her position as the state’s top law enforcement official, or whether the media attention to the case would affect them. None of the jurors answered “yes” to those questions. Prosecutors and defense lawyers spent the afternoon questioning individual jurors in the judge’s chambers.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele and his team of prosecutors say Kane illegally leaked secret grand jury information in a bid to embarrass Fina, and later lied about it under oath.
