Criminal defense work constantly presents criminal lawyers with bad facts coupled with bad law. A new case handed down by the Pennsylvania Superior Court is a prime example of this. The case is Commonwealth v. Stein, 2012 PA Super. 26 (Feb. 7, 2012). The defendant is now serving a five-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence because he […]
ACLU Sues Philadelphia Over Unlawful Stop and Frisk
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today that the American Civil Liberties Union has sued the City of Philadelphia for illegal stop and frisk policy. Stop and frisk has been around for decades, but, in order to do it, the police need reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot to stop and articulable facts to believe that […]
Mere Encounter Escalates Into Investigative Detention
In a recent opinion in Commonwealth v. Hudson, 2010 PA Super 96, the Pennsylvania Superior Court held that what began as a mere encounter escalated into an investigative detention when a police officer in Reading, Pennsylvania, took a defendant’s identification back to his patrol car to run the defendant for outstanding warrants. The Court held […]
Reaching Into Pocket Not Enough to Justify a Frisk
In Commonwealth v. Robert Cooper, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, with a three-member panel comprised of Judges Donohue, Allen and Fitzgerald, held that a police officer may not conduct a pat-down search of a person who reaches toward his pocket upon the officer’s approach when that person obeys the officer’s directive to stop before reaching […]
Commonwealth v. McCoy: If a Tree Falls in the Woods…
I just read a fairly recent opinion authored by Justice Castille, wherein the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that 18 Pa.C.S. Sec. 2707.1 (Discharge of a firearm into an occupied structure) does not include a situation where someone discharges a firearm while inside an occupied structure. In Commonwealth v. McCoy, 962 A.2d 1160 (Pa. 2009), the […]