Penalties, miscues sink Nanticoke

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Second half propels Holy Redeemer past Holy Cross

<p>HARRISBURG &#8212; The accelerating effort to dislodge Attorney General Kathleen Kane from office and her heels-dug-in determination to keep her hold on it are drawing in every branch of Pennsylvania government and could plow new legal ground.</p><p>Already facing criminal charges, Kane is making her case to Pennsylvania&#8217;s highest court about why she should keep her law license.</p><p>Meanwhile, Senate lawyers are searching for precedent under a little-known state constitutional provision that allows two-thirds of the chamber&#8217;s members and the governor to remove certain elected officials.</p><p>The most immediate threat to Kane&#8217;s hold on office is the potential that the Supreme Court suspends her law license, a decision that could come within days.</p><p>&#8220;For most people it may just be a soap opera, but for the legal community, there are issues of prime public importance that are greater than the soap opera,&#8221; said James Swetz, a Stroudsburg lawyer and past president of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. &#8220;So we&#8217;re waiting to see what the Supreme Court will do.&#8221;</p><p>The only other Pennsylvania attorney general known to face charges, Ernie Preate Jr., resigned in 1995 as part of a plea agreement. The case involved his failure to report campaign contributions from video poker operators.</p><p>Political discontent with Kane snowballed after she was charged criminally on Aug. 6, capping a tumultuous, 18-month stretch for the former Lackawanna County prosecutor. Montgomery County authorities accused her of leaking secret grand jury information to a newspaper to embarrass a rival former state prosecutor and then lying about her actions.</p><p>Numerous public officials, including fellow Democrats Gov. Tom Wolf and Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, have called on Kane to resign.</p><p>Kane, whose term is up in 2017, has refused and maintained that she did nothing wrong.</p><p>More established processes that could lead to her removal could take over a year. Those include impeachment in the Legislature, the normal disciplinary process for lawyers and her criminal case in the courts.</p><p>A quicker route is removal by the Senate and governor. Asked about the potential that the Senate will invoke that provision, Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, said lawyers are researching the chamber&#8217;s options, but no decisions have been made.</p><p>&#8220;We explore options when we see a train headed our way, and this train could be headed our way,&#8221; Scarnati said.</p><p>The state Supreme Court might act first.</p><p>On Friday, Kane filed a 107-page argument to the high court, in response to state ethics lawyers who are using an emergency process to seek the suspension of her license.</p><p>In her filing, Kane contended that suspending her law license while she is contesting allegations in the criminal case against her would violate her constitutional rights to due process and circumvent constitutional provisions for removing her from office.</p><p>Kane&#8217;s lawyers also rejected the allegations against her in the criminal case as untrue and said there was no proof that her continued practice of law will cause harm.</p><p>State ethics lawyers can request 10 days to respond. Then the five Supreme Court justices could vote in secret.</p><p>Opinions in the legal community appear split over whether the justices should suspend Kane&#8217;s license, and whether doing so would create a new precedent about the kind of conduct that could lead to license suspensions.</p><p>What does appear to be unprecedented is the question of what would happen if a sitting attorney general&#8217;s law license is suspended.</p><p>The state constitution requires the attorney general to be a licensed lawyer. But court officials say suspending Kane&#8217;s law license would not remove her from office, theoretically leaving her with powers that do not involve acting as a lawyer.</p><p>That, in turn, could spur the Senate and Wolf to remove her.</p><p>Even though the five justices &#8212; three Republicans and two Democrats &#8212; sent Kane the notice, they may not necessarily vote to suspend her license.</p><p>In procedural battles over the investigation lost by Kane, three justices &#8212; Republican Correale Stevens and Democrats Max Baer and Debra Todd &#8212; either sided with Kane or expressed deep misgivings about the process.</p><p>In a March 31 concurring opinion, Stevens agreed with the majority that a grand jury judge had the authority last year to secretly appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the initial leak complaint, but he also worried about vagueness, due process and secrecy.</p><p>&#8220;Simply put,&#8221; Stevens wrote, &#8220;transparency promotes accountability.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Kane </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/web1_Kane1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Kane </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Marc Levy</p><p>Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Marc Levy covers politics and government for The Associated Press in Pennsylvania. He can be reached at mlevyap.org. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timelywriter.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Battle over Kane’s hold on office plowing up legal questions