She was 21 and a college student. Anyone who recalls being 21 will also recall that it is an age of experimentation. Today she is dead, murdered by a person whom she dated for a month. Her killer was a 37-year-old man with a long criminal history of sexual abuse. It seems that toward the
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND THE “WILLOUGHBY MOMENT”
2017 was a remarkable year in many ways. In late Spring we watched one of America’s favorite entertainers tried for sexual assault. In October, prominent producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women. The list of prominent men who have fallen from grace since the Weinstein story broke on
Domestic Violence: A Report From The Data
October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. And, earlier this month the Administrative Office of the Pennsylvania Court (“AOPC”) issued its summary of statistics related to this form of action.
A note of history is in order. Pennsylvania did not formally define “abuse” or provide a remedy for its commission until 1990. Before that date, the
Facebook Antagonist Has Conviction Reinstated
We’ve reported on the United States v. Elonis in the past. This case involved a Northampton County man who made a series of threats on his Facebook page directed at his estranged wife, his employer, and an FBI agent who came to investigate a threat he made to attack an elementary school. Elonis, in
Post on Social Media, Go to Jail – How a Facebook Post Violated a Court Order
A recent criminal case addressed, in part, an issue we saw in the case of Elonis v. United States. The Elonis case went to the U.S. Supreme Court which ultimately reversed the criminal conviction of a man based on statutory construction grounds that his Facebook postings did not offer the requisite mental intent to
“They Lied: Make Them Pay”
For those who practice in the domestic relations world, one of the great frustrations comes when a client asks us to extract a sometimes appropriate pound of flesh as compensation for the “pack of lies” contained in a divorce related court pleading. Although it comes in an unpublished opinion the July 14, 2016 opinion in
Can Social Media Speech Violate Protection from Abuse Orders?
I recently wrote a column for The Legal Intelligencier about the Supreme Court’s decision in the Elonis v. United States to overturn Elonis’ criminal conviction and forty-four month prison term for statements he made through social media about his estranged wife, shooting up a kindergarten class, and slicing the throat of an FBI agent who
HUSBAND DRIVES ESTRANGED WIFE’S CAR INTO RIVER, GOES ON NEWS AND MAKES IT WORSE
I’m sure it felt cathartic at the time. An estranged husband rolled his wife’s 1990 Camaro into the Delaware River. He was frustrated that his wife had not turned the family mini-van over to him.
The funny thing about having impulse control issues is that there is a certain lack of foresight as to
PA COURTS WILL ENFORCE OUT-OF-STATE RESTRAINING ORDERS
Like many border areas of states, living in eastern Pennsylvania commonly results in legal issues which “span the river” into New Jersey, New York, Maryland, or Delaware (for our colleagues in the central and western part of the state, you
DEMANDING SEX FOR FINANCIAL SUPPORT IS UPHELD AS “ABUSE” AND MAY BE A FELONY OF THE SECOND DEGREE.
In a case decided by the Pennsylvania Superior Court on January 7 of this year, we have a new wrinkle in the world of what constitutes abuse under the Protection from Abuse statute. 23 Pa. C.S. 6102. The statute defines abuse to include knowing and/or recklessly causing rape, sexual assault or indecent assault. All of