The link below is of the 2018 Report from the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, highlighting its caseload statistics. A few points of interest:
1. The Superior Court remains a busy appellate court, handling yet again roughly 8,000 appeals per year.
2. The Superior Court only "published" opinions (set precedent) in 6% of all criminal appeals.
3. Criminal cases accounted for 45% of the Superior Court's filed decisions; civil cases accounted for 22%. The other 33% of the court's docket was disposed of by Order or Discontinuance.
4.Filed decisions per judge was averaging about 264/year.
5.The Superior Court affirmed (or upheld) the lower court 78% of the time.
6.The Supreme Court granted only 2% of the appeals taken from the Superior Court. That is 51 of 1,710 Petitions for Allowance of Appeal, which were filed. ... See MoreSee Less
2 weeks ago ·
Pennsylvania Supreme Court invalidates the longstanding Robinson rule in Pennsylvania, which essentially permitted police officers to stop and frisk a person, alleged or observed to be carrying a firearm, to verify whether they were "lawfully" carrying a firearm.
Our supreme court criticizes the Robinson rule as misguided and a departure from Terry v. Ohio--a foundational Fourth Amendment case--which only permits a stop and frisk if there is "reasonable suspicion of criminal activity" and reason to believe the person is "armed and dangerous."
Merely possessing and carrying a firearm concealed doesn't equate with "reasonable suspicion of criminal activity," as hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians lawfully carry concealed firearms everyday.
This supreme court certainly has not been afraid to make some waves in the law. ... See MoreSee Less
2 weeks ago ·
Two recent opinions out of the Superior Court that were interesting reads.
First was Comm. v. Dante Jordan, 2019 PA Super 173. Jordan had been convicted of conspiracy and attempted homicide, among other crimes, and sentenced to 37.5 to 100 years, but the Superior Court granted him a new trial due to a structural error in the proceedings: his parents were barred from jury voir dire.
Opining on the Sixth Amendment right to a trial that is open to the public, the Superior Court said this: "That right is for the benefit of the accused and ensures 'that the public may see he is fairly dealt with and not unustly condemned, and that the presence of interested spectators may keep his triers keenly alive to a sense of their responsibility and to the importance of their functions. . . .' '[A]n accused is at the very least entitled to have his friends, relatives and counsel present, no matter with that offense he may be charged.' . . . The violation of the right to a public trial constitutes a structural defect, a specific type of constitutional error warranting a new trial without any showing of prejudice."
By way of a little background, members of the public were excluded from the courtroom because of what the trial court articulated was an intimidating disturbance by a group of approximately 30 people at the outset of jury selection. The defendant, nonetheless, requested that his parents be permitted in the courtroom despite the general ban because they hadn't caused any trouble--a fact that was undisputed.
The Superior Court never said that a trial court can't exclude the public to maintain order in the courtroom; however, the Superior Court's problem in this case was with the trial court's exclusion of the defendant's family without any articulated reason supporting their exclusion.
The second case of interest is Comm. v. Harris, 2019 PA Super 171. I really only note this case primarily for its irony. Harris had been charged with 69 sex offenses, and he was acquitted of all of them at trial. He sought and obtained an order expunging all of his charges, but he appealed the expungement order, raising TEN claims of error, for what I'll say were trivial issues. For example, though the Superior Court ruled favorably for Harris in this regard, he claimed the trial court's expungement order should've been directed to the magistrates according to their court number, not their personal names. The Superior Court ultimately directed that the expungement order be corrected in certain details needless to say, but the irony that persists here is this: Harris, who sought expungement of this case from his record, now has to contend with a published, precedential opinion that will forever link his name to the charges he was acquitted of. So, sometimes when you win, you really lose.
In all seriousness, practitioners can pull two substantive nuggets from this case. 1) there's no timeline requirement to comply with an order directing expungement; and 2) the Superior Court noted in a footnote that the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC) "does not constitute a criminal justice agency." Which begs the question: does an expungement order compel the expunction of case entries on the PA Docket website that is popularly used by the public? ... See MoreSee Less
2 weeks ago ·
