The Kane Scrutiny: Walking on the Pa. Turnpike

It keeps getting harder and harder to defend Pennsylvania's first-ever elected Democratic attorney general, Kathleen Kane. Maybe that's for some defense attorneys, it's getting easier and easier to defend your clients against Kane's office.

Take the Pennsylvania Turnpike...please. It's a difficult road to avoid if you're trying to get from these parts, in and around Philadelphia, to anywhere in the western or northern part of the state. When it was built, beginning in the 1930s, in the depths of the Great Depression, it was a marvel of modern civil engineering, and tolls were needed to make that happen...fair enough.

But in recent years (at least if you're like me and refuse to get E-Z Pass) you need to make sure you hit a cash machine before you enter the Turnpike...or maybe bring one along with you. It seems like the toll is always 10, 15, 20 percent higher every time I drive it, and I drive it pretty often; if you take it all the way to the Ohio border, you may need one of those microfinance loans.

And every time you pulled out your wallet, you had to think -- someone's getting rich off all of this. Then, last year, came a criminal case that confirmed your worst fears. The attorney's general's office charged eight people -- ranking officials at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission or private contractors -- with bid-rigging and other acts of official corruption. The probe began under Kane's Republican predecessors, but it seemed significant that Kane continued to pursue the charges, because it involved Democratic bigwigs from the attorney general's home turf of Scranton, Pittsburgh, and right here in Philadelphia.

But you won't believe what happened next. Just kidding! If you've lived in Pennsylvania for longer than six weeks, you're going to totally believe what happened next. I'll let one of the state's top political opinion writers, John L. Micek, pick up the story:

So you've probably heard by now that Attorney General Kathleen Kane's public corruption investigation at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission has reached its end.

And you've probably also heard that, while resulting in some guilty pleas, that no one swept up in Kane's net is going to serve a second of jail time.

If that sounds even more implausible to you than the incomprehensible awfulness of the Philadelphia 76ers, then you're not alone.

Experts speaking to our pal Chris Potter of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are also scratching their heads and asking the same thing.

The end product of the case, which looked at 'pay-to-play" allegations at the nation's oldes, and quite possibly dullest, toll road, is "worse than a slap on the hand. It's a pat on the back, and the big loser here is the attorney general," Eric Epstein of the good government group Rock the Capital (which refers to the city, and not the building, and we've never gotten that, to be honest).

"Compared to other public corruption cases, the punishment is certainly light," but such cases are a difficult to crack, Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor-turned- law professor at St. Vincent College, tells the PG.

It's a common prosecutorial tactic to cut deals with the smaller fish in a corruption probe, in return for testimony that will send the bigger fish up the river. In this case, Kane cut deals with most of the fish, nobody spent a day behind bars, and then she took her rod and went home. Whatever her intention was, it certainly looks like if you are a white-collar criminal in Pennsylvania, you can do the crime and still not do the time. And in one of the most corrupt states in America, there's no worse message to send.

Especially when you remember that Kane is already under the gun for saying she couldn't bring charges in a botched sting that revealed four ranking Philly pols accepting cash and other gifts -- even though Philly's DA quickly got a guilty plea against one. Now we have these wrist-slap punishments...against Kane's fellow Democrats, after talk (which has cooled considerably, of late) that Kane might be enlisting the support of party leaders to run for higher office as soon as 2016.

It would be nice to hear Kane explain what happened, but she doesn't talk much. (Maybe because when she does, as in her bizarre and immediately retracted comment that an email scandal in her office involved child porn, she tends to put her foot in her mouth.) Kane has done a few good things in office, most notably stopping a foolhardy giveaway of the Pennsylvania Lottery, but after two years it seems clear that much of her reign has been a disaster.

It's a shame. Other states have elected Democratic attorneys general who've implemented a forward-looking approach that expands environmental protection and goes after consumer fraud or rampant white-collar crime. The best of the lot offer a healthy contrast from the pro-corporate policies of so many GOP top prosecutors. I'd love to say that Pennsylvania will have a chance to get it right with the next attorney general, but let's get real. Pennsylvania's next attorney general will be another Republican.