U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond, a Bush appointee in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, removed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner from a murder case and formally asked the Department of Justice to investigate him for perjury and obstruction of justice. The ruling dropped September 16, 2026.
The DA who made a career out of not prosecuting people now needs a defense attorney.
The case centers on Dennis Johnson, convicted in 2009 for the murder of Kenyatta Smith. Krasner's office filed a habeas relief concession under Section 2254 in 2022, effectively asking the court to overturn Johnson's conviction. What followed was a slow-motion institutional meltdown inside the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office that Judge Diamond methodically documented across months of hearings.
The key figure is Matthew Stiegler, Krasner's chief deputy. According to testimony from ADA Katherine Ernst, Stiegler told prosecutors that a colleague — identified as ADA Mason — "had purposefully inserted the false facts" into the habeas concession. Stiegler's proposed solution, per Ernst's testimony: "we have to get out ahead of this" by blaming Mason for the errors.
Mason resigned on June 2, 2026. Three days later, on June 5, the office filed a motion to withdraw the concession. By June 24 through 26, four assistant district attorneys — Ernst, Steven Wildberger, David Napiorski, and Peter Andrews — had withdrawn their appearances from the case entirely. That's not a staffing shuffle. That's a mass exit from lawyers who apparently decided they didn't want their bar licenses anywhere near whatever was happening.
Krasner's response to the unraveling was to direct his staff to "protect the office" and to "find mistakes that she made in other cases" — referring to Mason after her departure. Judge Diamond held hearings on July 17, July 20, July 23, August 27, and September 1, building a record that reads like a prosecutorial misconduct tutorial. Krasner brought in Jean Peters-Baker, a Missouri attorney, and assigned ADA Thomas Gaeta to try to stabilize the situation.
The referral to DOJ for perjury and obstruction is an extraordinary step — federal judges don't make that request casually, and Diamond's order makes clear he believes the evidence warrants a criminal investigation.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office responded on June 11, and the Innocence Project had been involved in lobbying for Johnson's relief. But the substance of Judge Diamond's ruling isn't about whether Johnson deserved a new look at his conviction. It's about whether Krasner's office lied to a federal court and then tried to cover it up when the lie started to unravel.
Four prosecutors walking off the case in a three-day window. A chief deputy allegedly coaching staff to pin fabricated facts on a colleague who'd already resigned. A district attorney telling his people to dig up dirt on the whistleblower. Judge Diamond didn't just notice a problem — he built a timeline that makes the cover-up almost harder to deny than the original misconduct.
Krasner built his brand on the idea that the criminal justice system is too aggressive, too punitive, too eager to lock people up. He campaigned on mercy. He governed on leniency. He let case after case slide because he believed prosecutors had too much power.
Now a federal judge is asking the DOJ to use that power on him.
