In 2017, a Philadelphia police officer shot an armed felon who was attempting to escape during a traffic stop. Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner charged the police officer with murder. The officer intended to assert that deadly force was justified under Pennsylvania law, which permits such force either to prevent death or serious bodily injury, or when necessary to stop someone attempting to escape while in possession of a deadly weapon. Krasner didn’t like the “escape” portion of the law, so he engaged in a series of maneuvers in an attempt to change the law for the police officer’s trial, well after the conduct in question. Every court that looked at the issue disagreed with Krasner – most recently, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In a biting concurrence, a Democratic justice ripped into Krasner’s tactics and said that it was necessary to “pull back the curtain” on the district attorney’s conduct.
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Tom Hogan is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
This piece originally appeared in RealClearPennsylvania