Articles

Over the summer, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court handed down a new decision that may yet revolutionize DUI plea negotiations.  In Bell v. Commonwealth, 2014 WL 3582707,  the Court held that multiple operating privilege suspensions of listed violations under 75 Pa.C.S. §§ 1532(a)(1) of the Vehicle Code are properly imposed following a conviction of each enumerated […]

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 […]

In a plurality opinion, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided in Commonwealth v. Molina, 2014 WL 6477607, that the use of pre-arrest silence as substantive evidence of guilt violates a non-testifying defendant’s constitutional rights.   This holding is based on the Pennsylvania Constitution, Article 9, the Declaration of Rights, and therefore will not be affected should the […]

Forfeiture is again in the news (see our previous posts here and here) as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled last week that a person’s home/and or other property  connected to the commission of a crime may be legally taken by the state through summary judgment, that is, without any requirement of a jury trial. Gregory Palazzari owned […]

In Commonwealth v. Descardes, 2014 WL 4696243, an en banc panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court considered whether it was error to treat a resident alien’s coram nobis petition as a PCRA petition and held that the peculiar circumstances giving rise to this case merited treatment as one of the rare instances where a claim falls outside […]