Pennsylvania Preliminary Hearing cannot be based solely on hearsay!! Finally!!

Pennsylvania’s criminal defense lawyers have fought a long and arduous battle against the notion that a Preliminary Hearing wherein a police officer testifies to what various witnesses told him satisfies due process. Having been dragged to the very bottom of this slippery slope, and watched Preliminary Hearings take place without a single witness with first-hand information testifying, we began to question whether the Preliminary Hearing offered any value whatsoever in a criminal case. Fortunately, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has finally weighed in with a definitive opinion (long overdue) that Preliminary Hearings based solely upon hearsay are unconstitutional. Commonwealth v. McClelland (July 21, 2020). We have been making the exact argument outlined in the opinion for years, but many of the local Courts simply refused to accept that.

This means that going forward, the Commonwealth will have to offer testimony from live witnesses to support a prima facie case, the requisite proof required at a Preliminary Hearing. Please contact me via the comments below if you would like the full text of the opinion – unfortunately I was not able to figure out how to attach it here.