A local blogger and former candidate for sheriff is asking the judge in Kathryn Knott’s case not to reconsider her request for a new sentence.
Christopher Sawyer filed a motion for leave Feb. 20 which, if accepted, would allow the court to consider his amicus brief urging Common Pleas Court Judge Roxanne Covington not to resentence Knott.
Knott’s attorney, William Brennan, filed a motion for reconsideration Feb. 17, asking Covington to lighten Knott’s five-10-month prison sentence. Knott was convicted of simple assault, conspiracy and two counts of reckless endangerment in December in connection with the September 2014 attack on a gay couple in Center City.
Brennan urged Covington to consider sentence parity — noting that Knott’s co-defendants, Philip Williams and Kevin Harrigan, received non-incarceration sentences as part of a plea deal, which Knott rejected. He also proposed community service or alternate options like Knott’s participation in a public-service campaign against anti-LGBT violence.
In his amicus brief, Sawyer, who runs political blog Philadelinquency, referenced the epidemic of anti-LGBT violence in the country, and noted that large cities like Philadelphia are traditionally thought of as havens for LGBT acceptance.
He wrote that Knott’s prison sentence communicates that the city won’t tolerate such violence, an idea he said that would be damaged if the sentence is revised.
“By removing Knott’s incarceration term from this sentence, this court would also reverse its own attitude towards simple and aggravated assault in the public sphere,” Sawyer wrote. “It would communicate clearly to all LGBT people, not just myself, that there is no justice to be found in Pennsylvania if you are assaulted and attacked merely because of the gender of whom you love or the gender with which you identify.”
Sawyer added to PGN that Knott’s testimony during trial illustrated that she doesn’t grasp the severity of the crime.
“She still doesn’t think she did anything wrong,” he said. “Now she’s sitting in Riverside [Correctional Facility] and is trying to get a get out of jail free card.”
