Crime Victims Rights Act

Paul Cassell | 3.11.2024 2:07 PM

On Friday, the Third Circuit unanimously affirmed a district court sanctions order against the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office for failing to protect crime victims' rights. The opinion is an important reminder that prosecutors may not ignore crime victims' rights and should confer with them during criminal prosecutions.

I previously blogged about the case here. As recounted in that post, the case arose from brutal murders committed by Robert Wharton and his accomplice. Wharton 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. At first, Wharton adjusted to prison poorly. He tried to escape while leaving the courtroom in an unrelated robbery case. To stop him, an officer had to shoot him twice. The Office prosecuted him for that attempted escape, and he pleaded guilty.

As the Third Circuit recounted, over the next six years, Wharton had a mixed prison record. Some of his behavior was good. But he also racked up six prison misconducts, including two serious ones for having makeshift handcuff keys.

In 1992, after Wharton's first sentence was reversed for a jury-instruction error, a jury sentenced him to death again. After state courts rejected his challenges, Wharton filed a federal habeas petition, which the district court denied.

In 2018, the Third Circuit remanded to the district court on the single issue of whether Wharton had adjusted well to prison—and whether Wharton's counsel was ineffective in failing to present such an argument to the jury. The Circuit ordered the district court to hold an evidentiary hearing on the subject. The Circuit specified that the hearing needed to cover not only "the mitigation evidence that went unmentioned" but........

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