Vanguard News Desk Editor
PHILADELPHIA, PA – The State Supreme Court here Friday ruled the articles of impeachment concocted by Pennsylvania Republican legislators here in 2022 against progressive Philly District Attorney Larry Krasner are “null and void,” said the DA’s office. “This second win for DA Krasner means the General Assembly’s impeachment effort is dead,” said the DA’s office in a statement, noting a December 2022 decision by the Commonwealth Court that the articles were unconstitutional because they did not allege DA Krasner engaged in “misbehavior in office” is upheld.
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives—not from Krasner’s Philadelphia district—impeached Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner by a vote of 107-85 in 2022, but a Senate vote was never held.
“That Pennsylvania Constitutional standard requires a showing that an officer engaged in what amounted to a common law crime. The articles, written by legislators from outside Philadelphia, fell far short of that.
“Instead, they largely complained that Philadelphia’s Krasner did not exercise his prosecutorial discretion or implement policies that they agreed with. Impeachments cannot be grounded in policy differences, particularly those of a district attorney who has been elected by voters who favored those policies,” said the DA office statement.
The statement also noted DA Krasner also raised in the Commonwealth Court a “second basis for challenging the Articles – the Articles died nearly two years ago when the Session of the House of Representatives that issued the Articles ended.”
The office charged, “Today’s ruling gives DA Krasner a double win. First, it reversed the Commonwealth Court and held, with only one dissent, that the Articles in fact had died nearly two years ago. That makes the Articles null and void.”
The problem with the article of impeachment, the state’s high court ruled, is that it “simply does not textually permit the House and the Senate of a subsequent session of the General Assembly to take any further action on matters which the House or Senate of a prior session of the General Assembly may have begun, but not finished during that session.”
The DA office noted, “Any other interpretation, the Court said, leads to ‘nonsensical results.’” The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves intact the Commonwealth Court’s holding that the Articles failed to allege that DA Krasner engaged in the kind of conduct that would constitute the crime known as “misbehavior in office.”
That, the DA office statement charged, is “a very high bar. DA Krasner, of course, did no such thing as the Articles were largely a compilation of gripes about criminal justice policy differences.”
The Friday ruling, is, added the DA office, a “victory for democracy and for the citizens of Philadelphia. As the Supreme Court recognized, DA Krasner is the elected and ‘overwhelmingly’ re-elected DA of Philadelphia. Philadelphia voters elected him to be Philadelphia’s chief law enforcement officer.
“The outcome of every election – including Philadelphia’s – must be respected. The General Assembly’s effort…to try to upset the Philadelphia election by impeaching DA Krasner was an audacious and undemocratic act. By stopping this impeachment effort, the Supreme Court joins the Commonwealth Court in rejecting the General Assembly’s attack on our democracy.”
