PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive
By Wallace McKelvey | WMckelvey@pennlive.com
In one of her few recent public appearances, Attorney General Kathleen Kane pleaded with lawmakers Monday to lift the statute of limitations on child sex-abuse charges and expand victims’ ability to file civil lawsuits.
“I’m begging you to pass that bill immediately,” Kane told a Senate panel considering House Bill 1947.
But Kane’s advocacy came with an important asterisk.
“I’m not here to give a legal opinion as to the constitutionality of the bill,” she said, as preface to her testimony. With her law license suspended in the wake of criminal charges stemming from the grand jury leak investigation, the attorney general is barred from practicing law.
That set up the latest public conflict between Kane and her office.
Bruce L. Castor Jr., a longtime prosecutor and Kane’s handpicked second-in-command, deflated Kane’s impassioned testimony with his own reading of state law. The bill’s civil litigation element is unconstitutional, he said.
“Without doubt, House Bill 1947 represents a laudable attempt to provide a remedy for a well-identified social problem,” the former Montgomery County district attorney testified. “However righteous the policy goals behind (the bill), the General Assembly in its zeal cannot overrule a state constitutional right.”
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