What to Know
- Pennsylvania’s former top state prosecutor was arrested last Saturday for driving under the influence in her hometown of Scranton, and was formally charged Thursday.
- Scranton police said Monday that 55-year-old Kathleen Kane was involved in a two-vehicle crash in the city at about 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
- Kane, a Democrat, remains the only woman to have been elected as the state’s attorney general. While in office, she leaked grand jury documents about a civil rights leader and a jury found she lied to the grand jury investigating the leak. She served more than eight months in jail in 2017.
Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane was formally charged Thursday with driving under the influence after she was arrested Saturday in her hometown of Scranton.
Kane was arrested after police responded to a two-car accident without injuries at about 6:30 p.m. at the intersection of Moosic Street and Meadow Avenue. The crash occurred about three miles from her home.
Kane told police officers at the scene that she was driving her sister home from a nearby bar when the crash occurred, according to the criminal affidavit filed Thursday. She said she had not been drinking prior to the crash.
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Officers then administered a field sobriety test, which Kane failed, the affidavit said. Pennsylvania's former top law enforcement official then refused to take a breathalyzer test, the report said.
A Scranton police officer wrote in the affidavit that in the days after the crash, surveillance video at a bar near the crash site showed Kane drinking at the establishment just before the incident.
She has a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 21 in front of a Lackawanna County magisterial justice, according to court records. It is not clear if Kane has a defense attorney.
Attempts to reach Kane were not successful.
Kane is currently on probation after being convicted of perjury and other charges in 2016, after she stopped an investigation into Democratic lawmakers who were taking kickbacks from a undercover investigator posing as a lobbyist.
Kane was angry about the information being public, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer, and leaked information about another investigation to retaliate against her critics. She then lied about the leak to the grand jury, and was convicted.
