Articles

Governor’s Pardons are rarely granted within the first ten years after a conviction. If you were just convicted five years ago you might not want to spend any money applying for a pardon. Although the pardon process can be a lengthy one and can take several years, the actual application is fairly straightforward with only […]

In Coppolino v. Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police, 2014 WL 5140043, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania decided that the bulk of the 2011 revised version of Pennsylvania’s Megan’s Law is neither unconstitutionally overbroad nor an ex post facto punishment.  However, the court struck down the law’s in-person travel reporting requirement as applied to an individual convicted under […]

We recently told you that Pennsylvania’s legislature was on the cusp of passing an important amendment to correct commonly known problems with the Commonwealth’s DUI law.  Well, on Monday SB 1239 was signed into law by Governor Corbett as Act 1189 of 2014.  Below are three significant changes worth noting. As we described in detail in these […]

Breaking News – It has just been announced that Justice Seamus P. McCaffery has retired from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the wake of the scandals involving allegations of distribution of pornographic emails to law enforcement officials and/or attorneys and a large referral fee paid to his wife while he was on the Supreme Court.

In an interesting development to the much publicized application of state forfeiture law (Forbes, John Oliver Emphasizing Philadelphia), the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court recently held in Commonwealth v. 2010 Buick Enclave that the Commonwealth may not attempt to forfeit criminal derivative contraband under the civil common law without evidence of a criminal conviction. In civil forfeiture actions, the government sues […]