Supreme Court rejects Kane's bid to delay trial

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane's last-minute bid to delay her perjury trial.

The decision, delivered in a one-line order Friday, means that jury selection is expected to begin Monday in Norristown.

Kane, 50, is charged with perjury, obstruction, official oppression, and other crimes. She has pleaded not guilty.

This week she filed an emergency petition to the Supreme Court, requesting that the charges against her be dropped.

Montgomery County prosecutors urged the Supreme Court to dismiss the so-called King's Bench motion, calling it "a thinly veiled eleventh-hour attempt to stall the wheels of justice."

Kane is accused of illegally leaking secret grand jury information to embarrass another prosecutor, and later lying about it under oath.

Kane claimed that the charges against her should be dropped because a special prosecutor appointed to investigate the case did not have the authority to issue subpoenas and act as a prosecutor. The issue was urgent because it "threatens the constitutional rights of the commonwealth's chief law enforcement officer," her lawyers wrote in their petition Monday.

Kane had made the argument once before to the Supreme Court, which ruled last year that a judge's appointment of a special prosecutor was appropriate, even though no state law explicitly authorized it.

Gerald Shargel, Kane's defense attorney, did not return a message seeking comment Friday.

Montgomery County prosecutors argued in response to Kane's motion this week that they had conducted their own investigation after receiving the grand jury recommendations. Kane's complaints about the grand jury have nothing to do with whether she committed crimes by illegally leaking secret information or lying under oath.

"Now is the time for trial," they wrote.

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