Pennsylvania Criminal Defense

A legal brief filed with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is asking the court to declare the death penalty a violation of Pennsylvania’s state constitution. The person filing it, though, raises eyebrows: it is Philadelphia...

A woman in Philadelphia is being charged with murder for allegedly assaulting her five-month-old son. News articles detailing the incident, however, focus on the fact that she has 16 prior offenses. The attention paid to...

Pennsylvania lawmakers struggled for almost a decade to come up with a risk assessment tool for criminal sentencing that would keep low-risk people out of jail and in probationary programs that could better serve them. The...

Police in Philadelphia have made an arrest in a cold case from 1991. The way they investigated the case, though, draws attention to new police technologies and the importance of your Sixth Amendment right to have a criminal...

A Pennsylvania lawmaker wants to continuously monitor the blood alcohol content (BAC) levels of people who have been convicted for driving under the influence (DUI). If the law passes, it would not just be a massive invasion...

The alleged architect of a Philadelphia-area Ponzi scheme has been sentenced on federal fraud charges. The sentence raises questions about restitution, and how people convicted of a white-collar crime could possibly pay...

Self-defense is one of the most important defense strategies available to people who have been accused of a violent crime. You have a right to defend yourself, even if that self-defense would technically amount to a crime. A...

The shootout in Philadelphia that hurt several police officers, but did not lead to kidnapping charges, has turned political. A federal prosecutor blamed progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner for the...

Actor Michael Madsen ended his case of driving under the influence (DUI) by pleading no contest to the charges. Here’s what a “no contest” plea means. Actor Charged with DUI, Pleads No Contest Back in March,...

The story all over the news in Philadelphia is about the police standoff in the Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood. Now that the dust from the shootout has settled, we can see what criminal charges are likely to be filed against the...

A college football player’s charges for drug possession are being dropped after prosecutors realized, once again, that field chemical tests are terribly inaccurate. In this case, the substance that the chemical...

Defense lawyers for some of the numerous people accused in Philadelphia under federal corruption laws are demanding that their clients receive separate trials. While the motion could turn an already logistically difficult case...

A man in Bucks County is being accused of making terroristic threats against Temple University in Philadelphia. The incident draws out the line between a criminal threat and your First Amendment rights. Man Arrested for Making...

A fire in the Philadelphia area shows how much criminal law in Pennsylvania focuses on your intentions. Depending on whether the fire was accidental or intentional will determine whether the suspect could be charged...

News outlets frequently fail to comprehend legal issues. In most cases, news stations treat people who have been arrested for a crime like they would treat a convicted criminal. In Arizona, a recent news story completely botched a...

A bizarre chain of events in Florida brings an often overlooked aspect of domestic violence law into the limelight: The so-called “Relinquishment Gap” that can allow people to keep their guns after they have had...

A crazy scene unfolded in South Philadelphia in the early morning hours of July 20, 2019. According to one of the alleged victims, she was robbed and beaten after filming a street race that ended with a crash that damaged her car...

A recent news story covered an ongoing focus of law enforcement in Philadelphia – ticketing people for littering. While the practice has definite benefits like clean streets, there are problems with enforcing the tickets and...

In our last blog post, we detailed Pennsylvania’s heat of passion defense and how it would likely come up if charges were filed over a thwarted kidnapping. Here, we’ll explain the differences between...

An attempted kidnapping in Philadelphia led to a string of events that perfectly illustrates one of the defenses to a serious violent crime: that the defendant acted in the “heat of passion.” Kidnapping Thwarted...