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Thread: Christopher Kennedy - Pennsylvania

  1. #1
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    Christopher Kennedy - Pennsylvania




    Facts of the Crime:

    On January 19, 2003, Kennedy and three cohorts (one of whom, Lavar Brown, was sentenced to death) robbed a pharmacy. Kennedy shot the manager, Michael Richardson, in the leg to “soften him up,” then dragged him to the store safe. Richardson opened the safe while pleading for his life. Kennedy then shot him once in the head. Kennedy testified at trial and admitted shooting Richardson in the leg, but denied shooting him in the head and said he did not know who did.

    Kennedy was sentenced to death in Philadelphia County on November 4, 2004.

    For more on Brown, see: http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...oto=nextnewest

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On June 25, 2009, Kennedy filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/pen...v02884/310297/

  3. #3
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    Convicted killer of Rite Aid manager gets life in prison after DA no longer seeks death penalty

    By Julie Shaw
    The Philadelphia Inquirer

    A North Philadelphia man who fatally shot a Rite Aid store manager during a robbery 16 years ago was resentenced Wednesday to life in prison after the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said it would no longer pursue the death penalty in his case.

    Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina imposed the life sentence on Christopher Kennedy, 36.

    Kennedy was 20 on Jan. 19, 2003, when he shot Michael Richardson, 35, who managed the Rite Aid on Girard Avenue near 12th Street in North Philadelphia, in the head execution-style.

    A jury in 2004 convicted Kennedy of first-degree murder, robbery, and gun offenses, and sentenced him to death.

    On Monday, Sarmina granted Kennedy a new penalty-phase hearing after conducting an evidentiary hearing.

    Kennedy’s attorney, Karl Schwartz, had argued in a Post Conviction Relief Act filing that his client deserved a new penalty-phase hearing because a prosecutor at trial had referenced a biblical passage, and because instructions given to jurors during the penalty phase likely precluded consideration of relevant mitigation evidence.

    Schwartz and Assistant District Attorney Paul George, assistant supervisor of the DA’s law division, did not reply to calls for comment Wednesday afternoon.

    When asked why the DA’s Office did not pursue the death penalty, Ben Waxman, DA Larry Krasner’s spokesperson, said by email that “we consider every capital case on a case by case basis.”

    He said the victim’s family “was notified in advance of the hearing today and the prior days which stretched into last week. They were notified and they were aware of the proceedings and what occurred today.”

    Kennedy’s accomplices in the robbery, Jamaar Richardson, now 37; his brother James Richardson, now 38; and Lavar Brown, now 41, were convicted of second-degree murder, robbery, and related offenses and received mandatory sentences of life in prison. The Richardson brothers are not related to the victim.

    Brown wasn’t arrested in this case until February 2004, more than a year after the Rite Aid robbery. In December 2003, he committed a murder for which he was convicted and sentenced to death in 2005. Krasner’s office last April filed a motion saying Brown should leave death row and be resentenced to life without parole. The state Supreme Court disagreed. Brown next has an April 18 hearing before Sarmina.

    https://www.philly.com/news/district...-20190313.html

  4. #4
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Philadelphia DA says prosecutors hid evidence for years in a 2003 murder case

    By Samantha Melamed
    The Philadelphia Inquirer

    Years after the verdict, a conviction for a 2003 murder appeared to be under threat.

    An assistant district attorney, according to court filings, had discovered that trial prosecutors hid evidence undermining the credibility of testimony that Lavar Brown was an accomplice to the murder of North Philadelphia Rite Aid manager Michael Richardson. The lawyer learned that one of two witnesses who testified against Brown had falsely implicated a woman who was incarcerated at the time of the murder and the lie wasn’t disclosed.

    Then, according to the filing, prosecutors decided to continue the cover-up.

    Lawyers for the Philadelphia DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) now say that a review of the case file revealed a “pattern of prosecutorial misconduct” and that Brown should get a new trial.

    “Those documents not only paint a picture of an unfair trial, they also reveal the equally problematic actions of post-conviction prosecutors scrambling to maintain a conviction despite the clearly questionable conduct of the trial prosecutors,” the CIU lawyers wrote in a Nov. 1 filing in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

    The filing included an internal DA’s Office email in which a supervisor described concealing prior witness statements as both routine and acceptable, and even proposing retaliation against a defense lawyer who provided information helpful to Brown.

    Philly's exonerations, rife with allegations of misconduct, call decades of homicide investigations into question
    The prosecutors who worked on the case insist they acted properly.

    Trial prosecutor Tom Malone said in a statement that it was “appalling” that the DA’s Office would move to reverse Brown’s conviction, noting that there was ample evidence of Brown’s guilt and that he is on death row for a second murder, the killing of Robert Crawford. (He also said District Attorney Larry Krasner had a pattern of trying “to usurp the role of the courts” to help Brown by agreeing that Brown should be resentenced to life for the Crawford murder. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected that.)

    And the victim’s widow, Kristi Richardson, has sought to intervene, saying it’s Krasner’s administration that is committing the injustice. She said the DA waited until the last minute to notify her of a November court date at which the CIU agreed Brown was owed a new trial.

    She also alleged that Krasner has a conflict of interest because his former business associates were previously connected to the case. One of them, Lloyd Long, represented Brown on a post-conviction petition; another, Jamie Funt, represented one of the unindicted coconspirators and was a witness at a post-conviction hearing.

    “They had 17 months to call the wife of the murder victim,” said Guy D’Andrea, who said he is representing Richardson pro bono. “Why did they call her 11 hours before the court date?”

    Cari Mahler, the assistant DA who handled the case during a 2010 post-conviction hearing, said in an email that no exculpatory evidence was withheld. “The evidence overwhelmingly established that Lavar Brown was the mastermind behind the robbery plot that resulted in the victim’s brutal murder,” she said.

    She accused the DA’s Office of improperly disclosing internal communications and seeking to circumvent the judiciary rather than hold a complete adversarial hearing.

    Brown was one of four people convicted of Richardson’s murder, a plot in which Christopher Kennedy was supposed to shoot the store manager in the leg but ended up shooting him in the head. Kennedy was caught fleeing the store with a gun and cash. Brothers James and Jamaar Richardson, who admitted to roles in the robbery, were also convicted. (They are not related to Michael Richardson.)

    The case against Brown was the thinnest of the group, according to the CIU: He was convicted based only on the testimony of two unindicted coconspirators. The CIU now says trial prosecutors hid the fact that one of them, Kyonna Lyons, had given a previous, conflicting statement to Malone and Detective David Baker. Baker and Malone, according to the DA’s filing, said they didn’t document that statement because they believed she was lying. The CIU said the trial prosecutors also hid that the other informant, Ronald Vann, had cooperated in multiple cases and had lied in his statement on the Rite Aid case by falsely implicating an additional person.

    Malone said the CIU did not give him the opportunity to review the file but added, “I am confident that their representation about exculpatory evidence is false.”

    When the information about Lyons’ prior statement came to light, prosecutors debated how to proceed. In a 2010 email to his colleagues, included in the DA’s court filings, then-homicide unit deputy chief Ed Cameron said the omissions were acceptable.

    The battle in Philly DA’s Office: Conviction Integrity Unit report shows rocky path to reform
    “We never advise defense attorneys about [prior inconsistent statements],” wrote Cameron, who died last year. He said the “only issue is” that Brown’s lawyers found out. He even suggested retaliating against Lyons’ lawyer, Funt: “If Funt is going to come in and say things to hurt us, we should not give him deals in the future. Also, maybe we should send a detective to go interview him.”

    That Brown will remain on death row no matter the outcome of this case, CIU supervisor Patricia Cummings said, did not factor into the decision to agree to a new trial. “When we have evidence of this kind of misconduct, you have to act on it,” she said. “He didn’t get a fair trial, period.”

    The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that prosecutors must disclose evidence favorable to a defendant — including evidence that may cast doubt on the integrity of a witness. R. Michael Cassidy, a professor of law specializing in prosecutorial ethics at Boston College, said evidence that witnesses lied falls squarely into that disclosure requirement.

    ‘Lying now, or lying then?’ Under Pa. rules, many are convicted on recanted statements.
    Police, he said, have often avoided writing down contradictory statements so they would not have to disclose them, he said. “That is completely inconsistent with the Supreme Court precedent. It doesn’t matter if the statement is oral or written. That’s impeachment material that the other side is entitled to know about.”

    In Brown’s case, the court has not yet determined whether to accept the DA’s agreement to a new trial — or decided whether to act on Richardson’s request to conflict the DA out of the case, or have him removed because of a conflict of interest.

    Cassidy said there might be a basis for the allegation that Krasner has a conflict under Pennsylvania’s rules of professional conduct. The rule bars a lawyer from representing a client if doing so would conflict with a personal interest — in this case, Krasner’s loyalty to his ex-partner. But, Cassidy added, he believes such a claim is unlikely to succeed, especially because courts have traditionally been reluctant to conflict out government lawyers.

    Cummings said there is no conflict, because Funt’s and Long’s involvement ended before either worked with Krasner. A Krasner spokesperson declined to provide a written conflict policy but said all relevant cases are referred to the DA’s chief ethics officer for a “rigorous conflicts screening process.”

    It will be up to Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio, who repeatedly sparred with Krasner after the DA unsuccessfully sought to have him removed from criminal court over his own purported conflict. (DiClaudio’s then-girlfriend had filed an employment discrimination complaint against the DA’s Office.)

    DiClaudio scheduled a hearing for December on whether to remove the case from the DA’s Office and refer it to the attorney general. He asked Krasner to testify.

    “It makes sense for him to explain in open court to the widow that his office should be making a decision in his ex-partner’s cases,” DiClaudio said in court.

    Cummings called the conflict question a distraction from the larger issues raised by the case: “It really does potentially call into question homicide convictions where cooperators were used. We know that the cops have lied and cheated for a long time ... but in this case you have for the first time documentation of the extent to which prosecutors were playing this game, as well.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime...edgdhp&pc=U531
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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