Articles

USA Today reported last week that nearly 2,000 convictions are being examined in Baltimore, Maryland, where the police improperly used high power cell phone tracking devices to  investigate crimes.  Defense lawyers plan to seek to have hundreds of convictions thrown out. According to the article, cellphone trackers known as “stingrays” have been used by police […]

Most will remember the popular, now infamous, news story from a few years back when a young woman was punched in the face by a police lieutenant at the Philadelphia Puerto Rican Day Parade. That incident was captured on video and audio by a local bystander and quickly went viral.  The past few years have […]

Those who have visited a prisoner in jail or seen it done on re-runs of Law & Order on television will recognize the “telephones” on either side of the secure plexiglass that separates the visitor from the accused or convicted.  The question the State Supreme Court will consider under a recent allocatur order from earlier this month is […]

After conducting a Frye hearing to examine the methodology of research into the field of eyewitness identification and how the research may aid triers of fact to understand the limitations of eyewitness testimony, a three-judge panel of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has found the science behind eyewitness testimony to be generally accepted among […]

Last month, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held in Commonwealth v. Cooley that a defendant was subject to custodial interrogation during an encounter with his parole agent.  Because the defendant was never read his Miranda rights, the Court further held that the admission of the defendant’s statement was in error and remanded the case for a new […]