Days after shakeup new Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner outlines his plan

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- It didn't take long for Philadelphia's new district attorney to make waves when he dismissed more than 30 prosecutors on Friday.

On Tuesday, Larry Krasner met with media and sat down with a one-on-one interview with Action News.

Krasner said he will try to end mass incarceration and not just try and score a high conviction rate.

"There's no longer going to be just a metric of how many convictions we can get, how many years you can get for a conviction," Krasner said.

Just days after he asked 33 prosecutors and staff members to turn in their resignations, Krasner defended his actions saying this is no different than what others have done when taking over a ship that has been troubled and trying to right its course.

"The coach gets to pick the team. It doesn't necessarily mean the players who were traded are bad players. Some of them might be, some of them might be great players, but they simply do not fit into the strategy of the team," Krasner said.

As far as policy positions, Krasner said that seeking a death penalty is essentially over under his administration.

"You never want to say never, but their decisions and my decisions are going to be informed by the fact that the death penalty is never imposed in Pennsylvania," Krasner said.

Krasner said he will work hard to end cash bail for low-income defendants charged with lesser crimes and he will also dramatically curtail the use of civil asset forfeiture, which critics say had been widely abused by prior D.A.'s.

"We're going to use civil asset forfeiture when there are convictions. We're not going to use civil asset forfeiture against a grandma whose grandkid gets in trouble and she's never charged with anything and did nothing wrong," Krasner said.

As far as accusations that he got rid of people he lost cases to as a defense attorney, Krasner pointed out that he lost a number of cases against one of the top homicide prosecutors, and that person is still in his office.

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