Yesterday, I filed an amicus brief in the Third Circuit, arguing for affirmance of a sanctions order against the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office for failing to protect crime victims' rights. The D.A.'s Office told a federal district court that it had been in communication with the victims' family before deciding to confess error in a capital case—a representation that the district court found was misleading. After the district court sanctioned the D.A.'s Office, the Office appealed to the Third Circuit. Yesterday's brief—filed on behalf of the family by attorneys from Gibson Dunn, the National Crime Victims' Law Institute, and me—argues that the Third Circuit should affirm the district court's sanctions order.
The brief recounts facts tracking back to January of 1984. In that month, Robert Wharton and his accomplice brutally murdered Bradley and Ferne Hart in their own home and left their seven-month-old baby daughter, Lisa, to die—the horrific climax of a months-long campaign of terror against the family. After Wharton strangled and drowned Ferne in a bathtub, and his accomplice stomped and strangled Bradley in the basement, Wharton sadistically shut off the home's heat in the dead of winter, leaving baby Lisa to freeze and starve. Miraculously, she survived—discovered three days later among the carnage when Bradley's father visited the home and heard her cries.
A jury found Wharton guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in 1985 and returned two death sentences. After a reviewing court vacated his sentences on a technicality, a second jury again determined that he should be sentenced to death in 1992.
