The attorney for a former Allentown police officer charged with theft and sex crimes claims there still is a conflict of interest with the Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office, and that the Attorney General’s Office should handle all the cases against him.
Lehigh County District Attorney Gavin Holihan announced Wednesday that the AG’s office would handle the sexual crimes allegations against former Officer Jason Krasley, 48, and Sgt. Evan Weaver, 46, because of a conflict of interest. But his office will continue prosecuting Krasley on his theft charges.
County detectives allege Krasley, of Upper Milford Township, stole $5,000 during a drug investigation in 2019. Krasley, who retired that same year, remains charged in four other cases involving alleged sexual crimes. In one of those cases, He and Weaver are accused of forcing a woman to perform sex acts.
During a status hearing Wednesday afternoon, Holihan told presiding Judge Thomas M. Caffrey that his office handed the four sex crime cases to the AG’s office for review, because First Assistant District Attorney Eric Dowdle, one of the prosecutors in the case, had previously represented an alleged victim’s boyfriend. The AG’s office agreed there could be a conflict, and took over the cases.
However, Holihan said that because that because that witness would not be called during the theft case, it was not referred to the AG’s office.
Krasley’s attorney James Burke took issue with that, noting that Dowdle was mentioned in a now-withdrawn whistleblower lawsuit against the city and the police department last year. The complaint states that Dowdle informed an officer that a detective was inappropriately contacting his client, a woman who was charged in relation to prostitution.
The whistleblower lawsuit accused the department of retaliation and not properly addressing officers’ inappropriate behavior,
The alleged theft incident in which Krasley is charged is also mentioned in the lawsuit, which was filed last summer and withdrawn at the end of the year.
But Holihan said that the lawsuit is irrelevant because it is no longer active and contains allegations, not facts.
The DA noted that he is comfortable with any decision of possible conflict of interest made by a third party, in this case the AG’s office. Burke said he planned to file a motion to have the AG’s office handle the prosecution.
The defense attorney also said he had brought up these potential conflicts before, and they were not addressed. He also questioned why the alleged crimes, now years-old, are just now being prosecuted. Krasley has maintained his innocence.
He remains free on bail. He is scheduled to appear at another status hearing in his cases in October.
