A former supervisor in Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office was suspended from practicing in federal court for three years after a disciplinary panel found she knowingly misled a judge while seeking to overturn a death sentence.
In an October order that remained under seal until this week, a three-judge disciplinary panel of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania found former Law Division chief Nancy Winkelman “knowingly made misrepresentations” in connection with efforts to vacate the death sentence of convicted murderer Robert Wharton.
“After multiple hearings and extensive briefing, we find that Nancy Winkelman knowingly made misrepresentations to effectuate a policy of vacating all death sentences on appeal, at PCRA, or on federal habeas review,” Judges Paul Diamond, Gerald Pappert, and John Gallagher wrote. “We do not credit her testimony that there is no such policy.”
The panel issued its recommendation on Oct. 27. On March 9, Chief Judge Wendy Beetlestone and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania adopted the recommendation and suspended Winkelman from the court’s bar for three years, while keeping the matter sealed pending appeals.
The case stems from efforts by prosecutors in Krasner’s office to reduce Wharton’s death sentence to life imprisonment. Wharton was convicted of the 1984 murders of Bradley and Ferne Hart, whom prosecutors said he strangled and drowned after terrorizing their family for months over a disputed debt. The couple’s infant daughter, Lisa, survived after being left alone in the home for days.
Prosecutors later represented that members of the victims’ family supported efforts to vacate Wharton’s death sentence. It was later discovered that prosecutors had not contacted Lisa Hart-Newman, who opposed the move. U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg ultimately rejected the request, ordered apology letters to the family, and later found prosecutors’ review of the case was “patently deficient.”
The disciplinary panel found Winkelman was “willfully blind to, and complicit in,” misrepresentations made by former Assistant District Attorney Paul George, who was disbarred from federal court last year. The judges concluded George acted as the “quarterback” of the effort, but said Winkelman shared responsibility for the misconduct and “betrayed the public’s trust,” according to a December report from The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Winkelman, who led the district attorney’s law division beginning in 2018, is appealing the suspension. In a filing seeking to overturn the sanction, her attorney argued the ruling was “infected by serious errors.”
PENNSYLVANIA SUPREME COURT SLAMS PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY
The unsealing of the disciplinary findings came one day after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sharply rebuked Krasner’s office for misleading courts, withholding evidence, and violating its duty of candor in multiple efforts to overturn murder convictions.
In a sweeping opinion Tuesday, the court ordered Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday’s office to review future cases in which Krasner’s office seeks to reverse convictions, citing what it described as Krasner’s pattern of unreliable representations to judges in his effort to get murder convictions thrown out. Krasner, a progressive district attorney, was elected in 2017 with the backing of liberal megadonor George Soros.
