Articles

On December 16, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Commonwealth v. Neiman declared Act 152 of 2004, which significantly amended Megan’s Law, to be unconstitutional, as violating the “single subject” rule of Article III, Section 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Article III, Section 3 requires that all acts passed by the legislature must relate to […]

Today the Superior Court unanimously ruled in Commonwealth v. Hainesworth that sex offenders who entered into plea agreements before SORNA in order to avoid Megan’s Law sex offender registration requirements cannot have a registration requirement imposed on them despite the retroactivity of SORNA. In 2009, when Megan’s Law was in effect, Deono Hainesworth entered into […]

A Pike County, Pennsylvania judge awarded a woman $6 million in damages for psychological trauma she suffered as a result of being sexually assaulted when she was in third grade. Thomas Harvey Matthews, a former teacher at the Shohola Elementary School in the Delaware Valley School District, sexually abused the now-23-year-old woman during the 1998-1999 […]

On November 4, a judge in York County ruled that lifetime registration for juvenile sex offenders under SORNA is unconstitutional. In his 41-page opinion, Senior Judge John C. Uhler drew on the principles that the Supreme Court set out last year in Miller v. Alabama, which held that mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles […]

On October 30, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decided Commonwealth v. Baker, holding that the mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years for a second conviction of possession of child pornography does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The court was persuaded by the Commonwealth’s argument that possession of child pornography […]