DA Larry Krasner seeks a tougher sentence for convicted cop Eric Ruch

District Attorney Larry Krasner has asked a Common Pleas Court judge to reconsider the sentence she gave a former Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man, saying it was too lenient and appeared to blame the victim.

Krasner filed the motion with a persistent nemesis, Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara McDermott, criticizing her decision to sentence former officer Eric Ruch, 34, to 11½ to 23 months in county jail last month after a jury convicted him of voluntary manslaughter. It was the first such conviction for an on-duty police killing in at least 50 years.

Under advisory state sentencing guidelines — which judges don’t have to follow — Ruch faced a minimum sentence of 3½ years, Krasner pointed out during a news conference Tuesday at the District Attorney’s Office.

Because McDermott’s sentence was under two years, state law mandates that Ruch serve his time in the Philadelphia prison system, rather than in the far-flung and grimmer archipelago of state prison system. It also meant that McDermott, and not the state Parole Board, retains control over whether to grant him early parole.

Veteran defense lawyers said chances are slim that McDermott will reconsider. Krasner noted he also could appeal the punishment to state Superior Court, but the lawyers said appeals courts have granted Pennsylvania judges wide latitude to impose sentences.

In sentencing Ruch, McDermott said he had demonstrated good behavior since he was charged in 2020, the second of three former police officers charged during Krasner’s tenure with killing people while on duty.

“Nothing he is going to do in prison is going to make him a better person,” she said.

Ruch, who is white, shot and killed Dennis Plowden Jr., a 25-year-old Black man, two days after Christmas in 2017. Police gave chase to Plowden after he took off at high speed in a car that officers had tried to stop because it was of interest in a homicide investigation. (Authorities said after Plowden died that he was not a suspect in that murder.)

The pursuit came to an end when Plowden crashed into parked cars in the Olney section. He emerged from his car, walked a few steps and sat down, leaning backward. Ruch shot him within seconds of pulling up at the scene. His single bullet pierced Plowden’s left hand and struck his head.

Ruch and five fellow officers testified that Plowden seemed to be making a motion in his pocket with his right hand and that they feared he was reaching for a gun. No gun was found.

In a 17-page appeals motion, prosecutors wrote that McDermott “improperly and excessively blamed the victim in this case.”

In a transcript of the sentencing hearing, quoted by prosecutors, McDermott said: “I’m sorry, but it was Dennis Plowden who refused to stop. It was Dennis Plowden who hit one police car. It was Dennis Plowden who continued down those blocks, endangering anyone who was out on those streets, endangering other vehicles, not just the police vehicles in the chase, who crashed into other cars. Dennis Plowden.”

McDermott and Krasner have also been at odds in another one of the cases the district attorney has brought against a former police officer. She presided over the murder case against ex-officer Ryan Pownall.

In that role, McDermott rejected Krasner’s attempt to limit the grounds on which Pownall’s defense lawyers could argue that police have a legal right to shoot suspects. Her decision was affirmed this summer by the state Supreme Court.

Three months after that, McDermott tossed out Pownall’s case entirely. She said Krasner’s prosecutors had bungled the grand jury process that led to Pownall’s being charged.

The Pownall case has been cited by Krasner’s legislative critics in Harrisburg who have mounted an effort to have the state Senate vote to remove him from office. Krasner has said the impeachment drive is legally flawed and groundless.