One of the protections afforded under both the Pennsylvania and United States Constitutions is the right against double jeopardy, which means an individual cannot be charged with or convicted of the same crime more than once. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania recently ruled that three DUI convictions for a single…
If you are convicted of a Pennsylvania DUI, the law affords you the right to an assessment of your level of dependency on alcohol and drugs before you are sentenced. If the court fails to provide you with an assessment, your sentence may be overturned. In one recent case, Commonwealth…
In a recent Philadelphia DUI case, the Pennsylvania Superior Court vacated the appellant’s illegal probation revocation sentence and remanded for further proceedings. In February 2008, the appellant was arrested in Philadelphia for suspicion of driving under the influence of marijuana. A subsequent blood test showed that his blood had traces…
On June 23, 2016, the United States Supreme Court issued North Dakota v. Birchfield, which held that warrantless blood tests cannot be justified under the search incident to arrest rationale, and, as a result, a driver may not be informed they are subject to increased punishment in the event of…
When a DUI defendant loses at trial, he or she can appeal to the intermediate court based on legal errors that potentially occurred at trial. One such challenge is sufficiency of the evidence. For example, a Pennsylvania DUI defendant recently argued on appeal that the evidence produced at his DUI…
A defendant appealed from the February 23, 2016 order entered in the Greene County Court of Common Pleas, denying his petitions filed under the Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA“). This month, the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the judgment. On December 3, 2013, the defendant pled guilty to theft by unlawful…
A defendant appealed from the judgment of a sentence of nine to 16 months’ imprisonment entered in the York County Court of Common Pleas following his bench trial convictions of DUI, possession of a small amount of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, and driving under suspension, DUI-related. He challenged the sufficiency of the…
A Superior Court of Pennsylvania recently affirmed appellant Ryan O. Langley’s appeal of his convictions of DUI and driving at an unsafe speed. The court upheld prior precedent holding that (1) an information is required to include facts that might increase the penalty when setting forth the essential elements; and…
Matthew Scott Diehl appealed from his 9 1/2 to 19 years’ sentence after a jury convicted him of various DUI-related charges, including homicide by vehicle while DUI and third-degree murder. Diehl contended the trial court erred when it allowed the state to introduce evidence of his 2005 DUI conviction and…
The Pennsylvania Superior Court recently reversed a lower court order granting defendant James Finley early parole. In the early morning of August 2013, Sergeant Timothy Clark responded to a report of a person unconscious inside a gray vehicle in a McDonald’s parking lot. Arriving at the scene, the sergeant noticed…