Category Archives: Criminal Defense
Bipartisan Bill Proposes Upgrades To Pennsylvania’s Treatment Courts
Anyone who has ever visited a prison as part of a volunteer program or religious ministry can tell you of how the people serving prison sentences wish that things had gone differently and have thought about the sequence of events that led to their crime, arrest, and conviction. When they listen, the inmates tell… Read More »
Your Criminal Defense Lawyer Will Fight To The End, But You Have The Final Decision About Whether To Plead Innocent Or Guilty
Legal cases in criminal court can be full of surprises and plot twists, albeit usually not of the kind that you see in the movies. For example, criminal defense lawyers do not leave prosecutors speechless at trial by presenting evidence that the prosecution did not know existed. More likely, the surprise will come when… Read More »
Lancaster County Man Faces Stalking Charges For Texting Scary Clown Emoji
Did you hear about the Florida woman who got criminal charges for offering commercial sex because she texted a red rose emoji to an undercover police officer? Yes, but that is Florida, where all kinds of nonsensical things happen. What about the Florida man who got drug charges because he went on Grindr and… Read More »
Trespassing And Pennsylvania’s Purple Paint Law
Of all the criminal offenses that sound like, by themselves, they cause little or no harm, trespassing ranks highly. What is so bad about walking on someone else’s property? When you were in middle school, you technically trespassed every day when you walked across your neighbor’s lawn because doing so was a shortcut between… Read More »
New Report Shows Socioeconomic Class As A Factor Determining Severity Of Sentencing
It is not hard to find examples of rich people acting like they are above the law. Eventually, the Florida Man Internet phenomenon died down because so much of the bizarre behavior documented on arrest reports in Florida was nothing less and nothing more than people acting out of desperation. That Florida Man who… Read More »
Can You Go To Jail For Contempt Of Court?
Failure to comply with the court’s orders or with the judicial process can make your legal problems worse. We have seen documentaries where antiheroes outwit the law by wiggling out of their GPS ankle monitors, and who can forget that scene in Goodfellas where Henry and Karen flush their cocaine stash down the toilet… Read More »
Contributing To The Delinquency Of Minors
When determining the consequences of illegal actions by minors, the law considers whether the negligence, or even the intentional actions, of adults may have enabled or even caused the minors to break the law. Consider that, no matter your age, duress is a valid defense if someone coerced you into an illegal activity such… Read More »
How Much Information Can The Police Require You To Give Them When They Stop You?
It is obvious to anyone who has ever seen a movie or taken a civics class that you have the right to remain silent if police arrest you. What about if, as far as you know, you are not doing anything wrong, but an officer comes up to you and asks you for your… Read More »
Extradition And Interstate Rendition
Some criminal cases that stay in the news headlines for weeks or months at a time involve extradition. A defendant might be wanted for a crime in one country but be staying in another to avoid the criminal case, and it might take a while for the two countries to reach an agreement about… Read More »
Can The Scientific Method Make Or Break Your Criminal Case?
When you are a child, science experiments seem like just another game. The experiments in elementary school where you mix substances together and observe the appearance and physical properties of the results are the most fun parts of science class, certainly more fun than the classroom activities where the only materials are pencil and… Read More »
