Articles

In television and movies, we have all seen someone’s guilt or innocence definitively proven during the course of a polygraph examination. It seems so believable, with all of the sensors and measurements and lines and graphs. Surely these machines work just as well in real life, right? In reality, polygraph results are wholly unreliable and […]

Last week, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decided Commonwealth v. Smith, where it examined the issue of whether police must inform a driver of a vehicle involved in an accident that the purpose of administering a blood test is to conduct a criminal investigation to see if the driver was under the influence of drugs […]

Pennsylvania’s appeals courts Like every other state in the country, Pennsylvania’s court system has multiple tiers: Magisterial District Courts, for minor crimes; Common Pleas Courts for more serious crimes; Intermediate Appellate Courts; and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Commonwealth and Superior Courts of Pennsylvania are the two intermediate appellate courts. Most criminal appeals from a […]

Every driver knows that getting a DUI is very expensive. Between fines, court costs, and lawyer fees, a first-time offender can expect to pay thousands of dollars . One thing many drivers lose sight of is how a DUI conviction can affect their auto insurance. If a driver’s current insurance provider finds out about a […]

Earlier this week, the Superior Court decided Commonwealth v. Gatlos, which dealt with the admissibility of drug evidence found incidental to a non-investigatory warrantless inventory search of a vehicle. An inventory search is one where the police are conducting a search not to investigate, but rather to find or take inventory of certain items. In its […]