The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office must face oversight from the state attorney general before judges can grant relief in cases where his prosecutors concede convictions should be tossed, reversing a lower-court order in the Levar Brown matter and detailing serious misconduct by Krasner’s Conviction Integrity Unit.

The court’s 4-3 decision, written by Justice Kevin Dougherty, overturned a lower court that had ordered a new trial for Levar Brown and cataloged a string of troubling practices by the DA’s unit. The majority found the office withheld material evidence, filed a false stipulation of fact, misstated facts in pleadings, failed to conduct a reasonable investigation, and opposed an evidentiary hearing. Those findings are not small errors; the justices concluded the DA’s concession in the Brown case “was not reliable.”

“The prosecutor does not decide whether a defendant is entitled to relief under the Post Conviction Relief Act.”

Brown was convicted of two separate murders by Philadelphia juries in 2004 and 2005, and Krasner’s team later told the courts Brown should get a new trial without an evidentiary hearing. Victims’ families pushed the issue to the state high court, which, after reviewing the record, found the office’s handling of the case deeply flawed. What the justices saw went beyond a difference of opinion about guilt or innocence and into deceptive filings and hidden evidence.

For years, Krasner’s Conviction Integrity Unit operated on a practical assumption: a DA concession would carry the day. The Supreme Court has put a stop to that shortcut in Krasner’s jurisdiction, telling judges they must not automatically treat the prosecutor’s concession as the final answer. From now on, Philadelphia judges must involve the state attorney general before granting relief tied to concessions from that office.

The remedy does not strip the DA of authority to make legal decisions, but it creates an extraordinary, targeted check. The majority said independent assessment by the attorney general will “enhance the reliability” of post-conviction proceedings. That independent review is unique to Philadelphia because the court found a unique breakdown in how Krasner’s office handled concession cases.

“As prosecutors, our role is to advocate for victims of crime, for public safety, and for justice. Centuries of experience teach that the best way to achieve that justice is through the adversarial process, with vigorous representation for both sides.”

The attorney general’s office has publicly said it is assessing the operational impact of interposing itself into these matters. Krasner’s team has made well over 100 concessions since 2018, mostly in murder cases, and more than 1,000 cases are still pending review in the Conviction Integrity Unit’s queue. The AG’s office warned that “given the many unknowns involved, including the number of cases concessions will be made in and our response to those concessions, it may be difficult to fully assess these impacts until the process truly begins.”

Politics factored into the coverage but not into the majority’s factual findings. Two Democrats joined the two Republicans to make the four-vote majority, with three Democrats dissenting. The dissent raised concerns about state interference in a locally elected prosecutor’s discretion, but the majority focused on the record: false stipulations, undisclosed evidence, and misstated facts undermine any claim of reliable advocacy.

“The truth is that criminal justice reform is a national social justice movement. And like all other social justice movements, it follows a certain pattern. First they ignore you. We’re past it. Then they laugh at you. We’re past that. Then they fight you. And we have been fighting for eight and a half years. And then the next step, we got to get there, is you win.”

Krasner framed the ruling as an attack on the reform movement and argued it treats Philadelphia differently: he called the decision a “close decision” and said his office now needs “the attorney general’s office looking over our shoulder unlike every other county.” That defense sidesteps the court’s detailed factual findings and keeps the conversation focused on identity politics instead of accountability.

The human cost of the ruling is immediate and obvious to victims’ families who lost loved ones to violence and saw convictions challenged without a full, transparent process. Each of the more than 100 concessions represents survivors and jury verdicts, and the Brown opinion raises hard questions about how many concessions were built on the same flawed practices. The court made clear the remedy is about restoring a functioning adversarial system, not about politics.

Brown’s vacated new-trial order returns the case to the post-conviction court for further proceedings, and the attorney general will now have a seat at that table. Whether the AG’s office has the resources to review a pipeline of over 1,000 potential concessions is an open question, but the court decided outside oversight was necessary given what it found in the record. The decision forces a check on a local office whose own submissions the state’s highest court said it could not rely on.

After eight and a half years in office, Krasner’s Conviction Integrity Unit ranks among the country’s most active, but the high court concluded that activity included serious missteps amounting to a breakdown of the adversarial process. The ruling is measured: it preserves prosecutorial discretion while demanding verification when that discretion produces concessions that the court finds unreliable. That is accountability by process rather than by rhetorical defense.