What to Know
- Former Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane served just over 8 months at Montgomery County prison.
- Kane began serving a 10- to 23-month term for perjury, obstruction and other counts in late November.
- Kane, once a rising star in the Democratic party, resigned following her 2016 conviction.
Less than a year after being jailed for committing perjury, former Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane is "grateful" to be a free woman again.
Kane was released from Montgomery County Correctional Facility on Wednesday morning around 8:20 a.m. after serving a little more than eight months for perjury and obstruction.
Kane briefly smiled and told a throng of reporters that she is "feeling grateful." She then got into the back of an SUV and drove off.
The SUV then stopped in a couple nearby parking lots where Kane met with some other people. She also appeared to be video chatting from the backseat at one point.
In late November, Kane was also smiling as she reported to the suburban Philadelphia county jail to begin a 10- to 23-month term for leaking grand jury material and lying about it.
She was let out earlier than the minimum sentence after being credited for good behavior, prison Warden Julio Algarin told NBC10 News Tuesday.
Kane will remain on parole through the maximum remainder of her sentence, which amounts to about 15 more months, the county said. She will then serve one year probation. Lackawanna County will monitor her while she is home in the Scranton area.
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Her lawyer said Kane couldn't wait to get home to see her two sons.
The now 53-year-old Scranton native had once been considered a rising political star in the state after becoming the first Democrat and first woman to be elected the state's top prosecutor.
At the time of her incarceration, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele, whose office prosecuted Kane, said Kane's incarceration "closes this unfortunate chapter for the people of Pennsylvania."
"As the jail door shuts her in, a strong message is being sent that no one is above the law. No one. Not even the chief law enforcement officer of the commonwealth," Steele said in a statement.
A county judge appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Kane after former prosecutors with the attorney general's office alerted him that secret grand jury material had been leaked to a newspaper.
She resigned following her 2016 conviction but was allowed to remain out on $75,000 bail pending appeals.
The state Supreme Court on Nov. 26 declined to take up her case, leading a county judge to revoke her bail.
Kane had argued before the lower-level Superior Court that she should have been allowed to use in her defense a pornographic email scandal within the attorney general's office and the wider judicial community and evidence concerning to the Jerry Sandusky child molestation case that her former office prosecuted before she was elected.
Kane had been critical of the Sandusky investigation while running for office in 2012, creating resentment among prosecutors in the case who told the judge about the grand jury leaks.
"This is war," Kane wrote in a 2014 email that was aired at trial.
Kane's other appeals arguments included that she was not allowed to prevent all Montgomery County judges from handling her case, and claims that evidence against her was illegally obtained and that she had been the victim of selective and vindictive prosecution.
