Kane declines to testify at perjury trial; defense calls no witnesses

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane chose not to testify at her perjury trial Friday, and her lawyers rested their case without presenting any evidence or witnesses.

A Montgomery County Court jury is to begin deliberating Kane's fate Monday after hearing closing arguments from both sides.

"I don't believe it's necessary for me to testify on my own behalf," Kane told Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy.

The abrupt end to the witness stage of the trial came after prosecutors presented the last of their 14 witnesses over four days.

Kane's defense team is expected to argue to the jury of six men and six women that key government witnesses have no credibility and that the prosecution fell short in meeting its burden of proof to convict Pennsylvania's top law enforcement official.

Prosecutors are expected to tell jurors that their charge that Kane leaked secret grand jury material and later lied about it under oath was corroborated by a stream of witnesses, phone records, text messages, emails, and other evidence.

Kane's lawyers on Friday asked the judge to acquit her of all charges, arguing that there was not enough evidence to proceed.

"How they can possibly achieve a conviction when one commonwealth witness is accusing another commonwealth witness of framing him, I have no clue," said Douglas K. Rosenblum, one of Kane's lawyers.

He was referring to testimony from Kane's former first deputy, Adrian King, who said Kane and a political consultant, Joshua Morrow, attempted to frame him for the illegal leak of confidential grand jury information, the act that formed the basis for the case against Kane.

In dramatic testimony Thursday, Morrow said he had plotted with Kane to pin the leak on King.

Demchick-Alloy rejected the defense request, saying "there is more than enough direct and circumstantial evidence" for the case to go to the jury.

Kane, 50, is charged with perjury, obstruction, conspiracy, and other crimes. Prosecutors say she illegally leaked secret documents to the Daily News because she wanted revenge against former state prosecutor Frank Fina.

In the trial, which began with jury selection Monday, several former and current aides testified against Kane, including Morrow, who described planning a cover-up with her.

Witnesses described Kane as "extremely upset" and "unhinged" after the Inquirer reported in March 2014 that she had shut down an undercover corruption investigation led by Fina. She blamed Fina for the story, her former aides said, and wanted revenge.

When the Daily News published a story based on the leaked documents, which detailed a 2009 investigation that Fina had shut down, Kane's former top deputy, Bruce Beemer, testified, he was concerned about the leak. When he approached Kane, he said, she told him, "Don't worry about it."

Morrow testified that he leaked the documents to the Daily News at Kane's request. He described publicly for the first time how he continued lying and changing his story to protect Kane until days before the trial.

Prosecutors used text messages and a recorded call to back up his latest version of events: that Kane was intimately involved in the leak, and met with him to plot a cover-up as soon as she learned that a prosecutor was investigating it.

The cover-up, Morrow said, was intended to pin the crime on King, Kane's law school boyfriend and longtime friend.

In his own testimony, King accused Kane and Morrow of conspiring against him.

In an effort to undermine the credibility of King and Morrow, Kane's lawyers highlighted the differences between their accounts. King said he had never known the content of the leaked documents, which he brought from Harrisburg to Philadelphia at Kane's request and left at his home for Morrow to pick up.

But Morrow testified that he told King what the documents were. And in a phone call that was secretly recorded by the FBI as part of another investigation, Morrow said King told him to redact names from the documents.

Kane's lawyers said Morrow's admitted earlier lies to a grand jury and prosecutors - for which he has been granted immunity in exchange for his cooperation - strip him of credibility.

Kane's lawyers insist she had no direct involvement in the illegal leak of confidential documents from a 2009 investigation of a Philadelphia civil rights leader, J. Whyatt Mondesire - documents that prosecutors say she believed would suggest that Fina looked the other way about Mondesire's alleged misuse of state money.

Prosecutors concluded their case Friday with testimony from Mondesire's former fiancee, who said the Daily News story based on the leaked documents had a devastating impact on Mondesire.

"Everything changed after this article," Catherine Hicks said. "He was a different person."

Mondesire was not charged with a crime, and died last year.

Defense lawyers pointed out - and Hicks acknowledged - that there had been other news coverage of alleged financial wrongdoing by Mondesire before the Daily News story was published.

Also Friday morning, reporter Chris Brennan, who wrote the Daily News story, was called to testify. He invoked the state Shield Law, which protects reporters from revealing confidential sources. He did not say who gave him the documents that formed the basis for his story.

"I'm going to respectfully decline to answer," he said when asked about the documents.

With their final witness, prosecutors sought to convince the jury that Kane was well aware of rules requiring that grand jury information be kept secret.

They called William Costopoulos, who was a defense lawyer for a Lackawanna County judge who was convicted of corruption in 1999. Kane, then an assistant district attorney, was a key witness against the judge, who was convicted of trying to obtain information about a grand jury investigation of his conduct.

Costopoulos read from a 1999 trial transcript in which Kane was quoted as saying grand jury information should be kept confidential.

"There are very strict rules," she said on the witness stand at the judge's trial, "and one of the rules is that it is a secret process. Period. And for me to give out any information to somebody who is not going into the grand jury is actually a criminal offense."

After the jury was dismissed for the day around noon Friday, Kane smiled as she left the courtroom with her security detail and relatives, including her twin sister and mother.

Lmccrystal@philly.com 610-313-8116 @Lmccrystal