Articles

Fairlie & Lippy, P.C. has won another appeal for one of its clients. In Commonwealth v. Ali, 2015 PA Super. 45, the Pennsylvania Superior Court recognized that the trial court had made three significant errors, and that, as a matter of law, Ali must be afforded the opportunity for a new sentencing. It should be noted that […]

In Commonwealth v. Stotelmyer, 2015 WL 668038, a three-member controlling plurality of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that imposition of a county intermediate sentence is impermissible where the underlying drug crime conviction carries a mandatory minimum.  At the outset, this case seems difficult to reconcile with existing Pennsylvania court cases addressing the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Alleyne […]

In Commonwealth v. Dunnavant, 2014 Pa. LEXIS 3457, a 3-3 tie (due to the resignation of former Justice McCaffery) resulted in the per curiam affirmance of the Superior Court’s opinion that a videotape recorded by a confidential informant wearing a covert digital camera during a staged drug-buy within the defendant’s home must be suppressed as […]

A three-member panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court held in Commonwealth v. Bizzel, 2014 WL 6756277, that 18 Pa.C.S. § 6317, the drug-free school zone statute, is unconstitutional under United States v. Alleyne, 133 S.Ct. 2151 (2013).  The decision is currently under appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Section 6317 of the Crimes Code requires additional, mandatory […]

By a vote of 43-7, the Pennsylvania State Senate has approved “The Medical Cannabis Act,” legislation that legalizes some limited uses of medical marijuana. 84 percent of Pennsylvanians say they support medical marijuana. This bill is a limited, but essential, first step in matching Pennsylvania’s drug laws to people’s expectations. The legislation, co-sponsored by Montgomery County’s State […]