If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice. — Justice Learned Hand
This is a tale of two Philly judges, one highly esteemed, a moral hero for these times. The other, a jurist more of the smacked-ass variety. Both have recently made headlines; side-by-side, their stories raise important questions for us: Who do we want to be? Does Madisonian deliberation and ethical probity still matter? Whither the rule of law?
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Before we meet them, our hero and our goat, my bias: I’m with ol’ Learned Hand, who, in addition to having the coolest name a jurist has ever had, was a legendary free speech advocate. He stood for the proposition that our greatest bulwark against tyranny is the judiciary. Judges as our last line of defense. Of course, another, more desultory line of thought was once expressed by Tammy Bruce, Trump’s Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations: “Judges are just lawyers in robes,” she said. We’ll get to that point when we meet our other judge.
Perhaps my romanticism of anyone who dons the robe has something to do with our own history. Philadelphia has given the nation an all-star lineup of jurists. That scorecard includes the legendary scholar and civil rights pioneer Hon. A. Leon Higginbotham, who, in partnership with Penn Carey Law School and Mural Arts, we honored in 2022 with a mural at 46th and Chestnut; reformer Curtis Bok; Owen Roberts, who, appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, stood up to FDR’s court-packing plan; and Juanita Kidd Stout, the first Black woman to serve on any state supreme court in the nation.
These times we’re in, when institutions are falling by the wayside all around us every day? They call for men and women of substance, leaders of moral rectitude.
The current roster of our Eastern District federal bench is impressive, as well. Jurists like the Hon. Wendy Beetlestone and the Hon. Gerald Pappert have long comported themselves in accordance with Socrates’ long-ago definition: “Four things belong to a judge: to listen courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly and to decide impartially.”
But there is one voice bellowing from 6th and Market that has long served as a moral beacon. He’s been in the news of late and just may be instrumental in toppling a district attorney.
A hero for our times
Judge Paul S. Diamond was once law clerk to the venerable former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Bruce Kauffman and served as treasurer and counsel for then-U.S. Senator Arlen Specter’s 1996 presidential campaign. Last month, Diamond made national headlines with his order removing Larry Krasner and Matthew Stiegler, the chief of the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit, from the case involving Dennis Johnson, who is contesting his 2009 murder conviction. It was a prime example of judge as akin to umpire, calling balls and strikes without fear or favor.
Diamond ruled that both Krasner and Stiegler acted to protect their own interests rather than those of the Commonwealth, and he referred the case to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation, citing possible acts of perjury and obstruction of justice on the part of an elected official sworn to uphold the law.
It was a bombshell, but the 40-page order isn’t incendiary. It is, in fact, in keeping with Socrates. It’s sober, careful, and fact-laden. It tells a damning story of ethical — and maybe legal — breaches, without jumping to conclusion. Diamond conducted his own investigation and laid out a damning fact-based timeline. I dare say, it’s clearer and better written than anything in the public realm about these latest Krasner contretemps, and that includes anything done by this reporter.
We’re publishing Diamond’s order because it is that good. He lays out not only the facts, but also a narrative laced with moral righteousness. Here’s just one snippet, laying out the appearance of a cover-up regarding the DAO’s Concession of Johnson’s murder conviction:
Mr. Krasner’s actions are more troubling. He did not simply learn of the [head of the Conviction Integrity Unit] Stiegler’s proposal; he urged the Law Division supervisors — who serve at Mr. Krasner’s pleasure — to implement it and to present a false narrative to the Court. Mr. Krasner directed that the DAO stay involved in Johnson ‘to protect the office’ — which Napiorski believed also meant protecting Mr. Krasner himself — and that the Four ‘not do any investigation’. He thus sought to direct the very lawyers obligated by law to correct the Concession’s errors to do just the opposite. Even worse, when told that the Four believed they had to alert me, Mr. Krasner responded that ‘there would be consequences for Ms. Ernst if she alerted the Court to the conflict issue’ and that there would be consequences ‘if anyone did.’ Both Wildberger and Napiorski understood Mr. Krasner to be threatening their jobs. Lin confirmed this when she told Napiorski that their ‘jobs may be salvageable.’ Mr. Krasner’s threat thus could amount to obstruction of justice.
Krasner’s response to Diamond’s order? “When it comes to all of these nominally serious but actually wafty accusations of criminal conduct, tempered by ‘coulds’ and ‘mights’ and ‘may haves,’ [Diamond’s] analysis rests on nothing of substance,” Krasner said upon appealing.
That’s Krasner, unintentionally revealing. What Diamond did was to lay out a story — and signal to the feds that a legal process ought to decide its outcome. In that, Diamond was keeping faith with Socrates and Madison.
Krasner’s objection illustrates the fault that has brought him and his career to this precipice; he is ever the true believer. Think of it: A devout ideologue like Krasner only cares about the outcome, not the process of searching for truth wherever it may lead.
Shanin Specter, the acclaimed trial attorney and son of former DA and U.S. Senator Arlen Specter, has known Judge Diamond for 40 years. His father recommended Diamond to President George W. Bush for the federal bench. Shanin says criminal law classes should study Diamond’s order, for some of the very reasons Krasner has criticized it: Its moral rectitude, and yet its humility and refusal to rush to judgment.
“Judge Diamond is not a person to be crossed. If he feels people are not living to the standard he thinks they should, that will weigh heavily on his mind. I’ll say that diplomatically.” — Former District Attorney Seth Williams
“The people who live and/or work in Philadelphia can take a lot of solace in the fact that we have a guardian of the people in our community,” he told me. “I’ve read Judge Diamond’s order twice. It is a model of understated brilliance. He was able to marshal together a tremendous number of facts, each one with a citation to part of the record. It’s as easy to read for a layperson as a lawyer.”
I’ve been on the Diamond bandwagon before, because he’s a justice (like my hero, Higginbotham) who marries Madisonian deliberation with indignation whenever the social contract gets trampled upon. Nearly a decade ago, some of us cheered, and others jeered, when Diamond sentenced District Attorney Seth Williams after Williams pled guilty to bribery charges. Diamond struck the same notes of moral rectitude we used to hear from Specter, a cut-and-dried view of right versus wrong that is too often in short supply these days.
“I have a guilty plea from the highest law enforcement officer in the city,” Diamond said. “He betrayed his office and he sold his office. I am appalled by the evidence that I have heard.”
Legal insiders were aghast that Diamond had Williams handcuffed and carted away immediately, granting the defendant no time to get his affairs in order. Other corrupt pols like Vince Fumo and Chaka Fattah had been given such leeway; not so Williams.
“He didn’t kill anyone, for Christ’s sake,” legendary defense lawyer, and one-time prosecutor, Jack McMahon told The Inquirer after Diamond’s decree. “I don’t think it was necessary to jail him now, and to be honest, I thought it was harsh.”
But by surprising everyone and sending Williams away without delay, Diamond seemed to be sending a much-needed message. Diamond’s nature is not to suffer fools, whether they be highfalutin’ DAs with the chutzpah to argue that campaign funds are rightly spent on a Sporting Club membership because getting buff is critical to getting elected — seriously — or grandmas who commit decades of fraud.
That’s a reference to a case involving Doris Whitfield Richardson, a 60-year-old wheelchair-using defendant, who came before Diamond. She had carried on a two-decade scheme to collect her late grandmother’s veteran survivor benefits to, she testified, care for two young adult grandchildren, one of whom was disabled. Let’s listen in:
Judge Diamond: Did it ever occur to you to go out and get a job?
Whitfield Richardson: I did want a job.
Judge Diamond: You stole close to a quarter of a million dollars. Did it ever occur to you that the way to help your grandchildren was to not commit an endless series of federal frauds?
Whitfield Richardson: I see that now.
Judge Diamond: Now?
Whitfield Richardson: I see it. I didn’t see it that way.
Sentencing Whitfield Richardson to nearly three years in jail, Diamond ordered her taken into immediate custody. He treated the high-flying, jet-setting DA and the wheelchair-using grandma the same in his courtroom. Isn’t justice supposed to be blind?
Williams, who deserves immense credit for turning his life around since his time in prison, is naturally mum when it comes to Diamond, if not Krasner, who he maintains has always been about sowing chaos: “The best way to take down the DA’s office is by taking it over from the inside and blowing it up, which is what Larry has done,” he told me this week. Of Diamond, Williams concedes: “Judge Diamond is not a person to be crossed. If he feels people are not living to the standard he thinks they should, that will weigh heavily on his mind. I’ll say that diplomatically.”
And now … the anti-Diamond
Which brings us to our other judge, object lesson number two. Common Pleas Court Judge Scott DiClaudio is the anti-Diamond, a jurist who hits all the wrong notes in his deportment and judgment. I first became aware of him back in the Williams era; DiClaudio was Williams’ longtime best friend. When the Board of Ethics hit Williams with the largest ethics fine in city history in 2017 — $62,000 — many of the improper gifts the DA had accepted were from his buddy, sitting Judge DiClaudio. DiClaudio may have been the type Tammy Bruce was thinking about; before even ascending to the bench, he’d come under fire from the State Supreme Court time and again for ethical legal breaches.
Last year, DiClaudio angrily refuted ethics board complaints that he was, in effect, moonlighting as a cheesesteak purveyor. You read that right. Now comes the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board calling for DiClaudio’s removal from the bench for a pattern of questionable and “boorish” behaviors that culminated in what appears to be an attempt to influence the disposition of another judge’s case on behalf of the interests of his friend, rapper Meek Mill. You read that right, too.
DiClaudio calls it all a misunderstanding. But here’s the thing. Paul Diamond ain’t hanging with Meek Mill, let alone doing favors for him. He’s not footing the bill for tropical vacations with those who appear before him in court. He’s not slinging cheesesteaks in his free time, as DiClaudio recounted having done on a podcast.
It doesn’t seem like DiClaudio has broken any laws, but that’s not really the point, is it? These times we’re in, when institutions are falling by the wayside all around us every day? They call for men and women of substance, leaders of moral rectitude.
There has been a lot of highbrow talk this last decade about how low American culture has sunk and how we can get it back. In the uplifting case of Diamond and the cautionary tale of DiClaudio, we have a simple answer: We need men of better character, now more than ever.
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