GOP group edits Kane ad in AG race, adds new claim

The Republican State Leadership Committee, which had been running an inaccurate commercial for nearly five days about Kathleen Kane, the Democratic nominee for state Attorney General, has now released a new version of the ad.  The political non-profit, based in Washington, D.C., tries to blame Kane for the inaccuracy after she complained Friday that she played no role in the resolution of two rape cases cited in the original version of the ad.

"Now she lets others take responsibility for violent criminals given weak plea deals," a female narrator says in the new version, which drops claims that Kane went "soft" on the two rape cases while serving as an assistant district attorney in Lackawanna County.

The Lackawanna County District Attorney's Office has disputed the RSLC accusations, saying Kane was not assigned to the cases when they were resolved. The father of a rape victim in one of the cases issued a letter saying the RSLC "should be ashamed" of the ad.

The new version of the ad cites a third rape case with a 15-year-old victim not mentioned in the original version.  In that case a jury of seven women and five men found a 27-year-old man guilty of statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault and indecent assault but acquitted him of rape, sexual assault and indecent exposure, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune.

"And in one of her only trials, Kane failed miserably, resulting in the alleged rapist of a 15-year-old getting off on a conviction of lesser charges," the narrator says in the new version.

Kane on Friday said she recalled that case, which the RSLC listed on its web site before adding it to the commercial Monday.  She said it was unfair for the RSLC to suggest that she went light on the defendant in that case.

"It was a jury verdict," Kane said of the case. "How do you go light when it is a jury verdict?"