Articles

The issue of eyewitness identification has been a hot topic in Pennsylvania’s legal community lately. New Jersey’s Supreme Court recently ruled that several changes need to be made to their eyewitness identification procedures to ensure that innocent individuals are not wrongly convicted. Three quarters of the individuals who have been exonerated by DNA evidence were […]

Pennsylvania Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions Calls for Safeguards To Protect Innocent Defendants The Report of the Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions was finally published this week after years of research. Its findings and conclusions were based on several key principles. The first was that in order for citizens to have confidence in the justice […]

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has refused to hear the District Attorney’s Appeal of a Superior Court PCRA ruling that will require the Montgomery County District Attorney to produce evidence collected from a 1986 Murder scene for DNA testing. Steven Fairlie argued the case with the Innocence Project before the Honorable S. Gerald Corso, who ruled […]

The New Jersey Supreme Court recently changed the rules regarding eyewitness identification as set forth in State v. Henderson. The basis for these changes is evidence that showed eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. In New Jersey, three out of five overturned cases involve mistaken eyewitness identification. We […]

Use of Deadly Force in Pennsylvania Expanded Beyond the Confines of Your “Castle” In Pennsylvania, there is a limited right to self-defense when you are attacked. The use of force in self-defense is justifiable when an individual believes it is necessary to protect himself against force from another person. However, in order to be justifiable, […]