Law Offices of Kelly & Conte's Blog

Sex Crimes such as Loitering and prowling at night is a criminal offense defined under section 5506 of the Pa criminal code. Essentially, this act is defined as maliciously loitering or maliciously prowling around an occupied structure at night.  child endangerment Given the vague wording of the statue, in order to fully understand it, the terms used need to be defined. The state defines loitering as lingering, staying, remaining or waiting at one location. In addition, the state defines prowling as roving or wandering in a stealthy manner. Finally, the state defines the term malicious as vexatious, annoying, injurious, or with intent to do a wrongful act. The most important element of this statute is the malicious intent. In order for this charge to hold up, the commonwealth must prove that an individual's actions met the standard of malicious intent. This is a high burden of proof that the is on the commonwealth to prove. This statute is a misdemeanor of the third-degree which makes it a fairly serious offense. If found guilty, a sentence of up to a year incarcerated and a hefty fine can be imposed.

The 4^th amendment typically applies to police searches involving drug crimes. The 4^th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. Heroin Crimes So, when exactly can police search an individual, specifically a person's vehicle? There are several ways a police officer can obtain legal authority to do so. The first is the long drawn out process of obtaining a search warrant. The officer must outline specifically where they will be searching and must provide a reason or justification as to why the search is necessary, and a judge must sign off on the search. However, this is not how most officers obtain legal authority to search an individual's vehicle. Most searches are based on probable case (PC) alone. PC is essentially certain factors are present during an interaction with police that leads the officer to believe a crime has been committed. This gives the officer a reasonable ground to base the search off of. For instance, a very common form of PC is the presence of marijuana odor admitting from the individual's vehicle. If during the course of a traffic stop, the officer detects the odor of marijuana, that officer can use the presence of the marijuana odor as PC and search the vehicle without needing a warrant.

As a result of a recent string of college crimes on college campuses a new statute was enacted called Aggravated Hazing. Fraternities and sororities have a long-standing initiation tradition which is commonly referred to as hazing. In any circumstance that involves excessive amounts of alcohol and college aged individuals, things have a way of spiraling out of control very quickly and can result in serious injury. assaults on college campuses Incidents that have made headlines typically involve a new recruit at a fraternity dying or getting seriously hurt during that organizations initiation process. When this occurs, the people involved run the risk of being charged with the serious offense of aggravated hazing. Aggravated hazing is just defined under section 2803 of the Pa criminal code. It has the same definition as hazing, which is just any act that recklessly endangers the mental or physical health of an individual as part of the initiation process into an organization, except that the actions that took place results in serious bodily injury or death.

Victims in Sex Crimes cases can involve the Safe harbor for sexually exploited children. The criminal justice system is based entirely around the defendant. The defendant and not the victim has rights in the criminal justice system. child endangerment Throughout the history of our criminal justice system the victims of the crime were not really paid attention to unless they were needed in order to testify. That has changed over the years and many victim's rights bills have been passed at the federal level with the states following suit. One of the bills that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania passed to focus on victim's rights is the safe harbor for sexually exploited children statutes. The main statute is defined under section 3061 of the Pa criminal code and it establishes that the state must provide services for children who have been sexually exploited. Services such as housing, education, medical treatment, and therapy are all the types of services that sexually exploited children can choose to participate in which will all be provided by funds from the state.