Ex-Attorney General Kane set for release from jail Wednesday

(Undated) — A former Pennsylvania attorney general will be released from a county jail after serving about eight months for leaking grand jury material and lying about it, the warden said Tuesday.

Montgomery County Correctional Facility Warden Julio Algarin said Kathleen Kane shaved about two months off her minimum sentence by serving her time without any problems. She is scheduled for release early Wednesday.

Kane, 53, was sentenced in 2016 to 10-to-23 months for perjury, obstruction and other counts. After appeals failed, she turned herself in to the jail in the Philadelphia suburb of Eagleville at the end of November.

Her lawyer, Steve Fairlie, said Tuesday that Kane was treated like anyone else in terms of parole.

“She can’t wait to get home and see her boys,” Fairlie said, referring to her two sons. “I think it’s been a roller coaster, but right now she’s at the top of a loop, just about to get out of jail.”

Kane, a native of Scranton, became the first Democrat and first woman to be elected the state’s top prosecutor in 2012.

A special prosecutor was named to investigate Kane after former prosecutors with the attorney general’s office reported that secret grand jury material had been leaked to a newspaper. She resigned after her 2016 conviction.

Kane had said during her unsuccessful appeals that her defense should have been allowed to use a pornographic email scandal within the state’s attorney general’s office and judicial community as well as evidence about the Jerry Sandusky child molestation case that her former office prosecuted before she was elected.

She had also argued that she was wrongly turned down in an effort to keep all Montgomery County judges from handling her case, that evidence against her was illegally obtained and that she had been the victim of selective and vindictive prosecution.

Fairlie, her lawyer, said he was unsure whether Kane has plans to work.
Kane voluntarily submitted and signed paperwork that led the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to issue a disbarment order against her in March.