Former Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane, once a rising star in state politics, left a courtroom in handcuffs on Monday after receiving a 10-to-23-month sentence for a retaliation scheme a judge linked to Kane’s all-consuming ego.
Kane, 50, was also sentenced to eight years of probation by a Montgomery County judge, who said Kane’s need for revenge led her to break the law and then lie to a grand jury.
Kane, who was accused of leaking secret investigative files to embarrass a rival prosecutor, was convicted of perjury and obstruction.
Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy said Kane assumed an “off with your heads” mentality as she ran the state’s top law enforcement agency.
The judge called Kane a political “neophyte” who failed to make the transition from politician to public servant when she took office in 2013.
Kane, the first woman and first Democrat elected as the state’s top prosecutor, was released on Monday after posting US$75,000 cash bail. She can remain free while her legal team appeals her conviction.
“I really don’t care what happens to me,” Kane told the judge. “There is no more torture in the world than to watch your children suffer and know you had something to do with it.”
Kane had been a stay-at-home mother in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, area and a former assistant prosecutor in Lackawanna County before using US$2 million of her husband’s trucking fortune to run for statewide office in 2012.
“Your children are the ultimate ... collateral damage. They are casualties of your actions, but you did that, not this court,” the judge said.
Kane did not testify at her trial. She was convicted in August of two felony counts of perjury and seven misdemeanor charges, and she resigned the next day.
Earlier on Monday, Kane’s 15-year-old son, Chris Kane, pleaded for leniency while her former deputies described an office demoralized by her leadership and terrorized by “Nixonian espionage.”
Kane argued that the loss of her career, law license and reputation was punishment enough.
She had asked the judge to sentence her to probation or house arrest so she could be home to raise her sons. She and her husband are now estranged and share custody of the teenage boys.
The one-term attorney general said her younger son, 14-year-old Zachary Kane, did not attend Monday’s sentencing because “he couldn’t even bear it.”
Prosecutors called her crimes “egregious” and pushed for jail time after the defense sought probation or house arrest.
They said a paranoid Kathleen Kane ruined morale in the 800-person office and the wider law enforcement community, burning bridges among state, local and federal agencies.
“Through a pattern of systemic firings and Nixonian espionage, she created a terror zone in this office,” said Erik Olsen, a career prosecutor who is now the chief deputy attorney general.
Kathleen Kane enjoyed mostly good press early on as she supported gay marriage, ramped up a child predator unit run by her twin sister and questioned her predecessor’s handling of a Pennsylvania State University child sexual assault case.
Kathleen Kane’s feud with one of the prosecutors, Frank Fina, who had helped run the university probe and other sensitive investigations, led to the leak.
Kathleen Kane, taking aim at Fina, had a campaign consultant pass confidential files to a reporter about a corruption case he had declined to charge before he left the office, authorities said.
She then tried to frame someone else for the leak, aides testified.
Aside from the conviction, Kathleen Kane’s political career will be remembered for her investigation of pornography that she said was being traded on state computers by judges, lawyers and other public employees.
Two Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices resigned amid the fallout.
District Attorney Kevin Steele said the jail term was a long time coming.
“She said: ‘This was war,’ and truth became a casualty,” he said, quoting from a Kathleen Kane e-mail about her rivals.
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