Earlier this week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued orders that will make several changes in how criminal cases are handled in Philadelphia Municipal Court.

The Court amended Rule 1003, which governs the procedure in non-summary Municipal Court charges:

· Preliminary hearings will now take place 14-21 days after the preliminary arraignment, instead of three to 10 days after arraignment. This change is intended to give prosecutors more time to conduct discovery, as well as allow defense counsel more time to interview clients.

· Defendants who do not show up for their preliminary hearings will be deemed to have waived their right to be present for the hearings, unless they have good cause for not appearing. Hearings will proceed in their absence, and bench warrants will be issued for the defendants. When arrested on the bench warrants, defendants will then appear in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

· Procedures in Municipal Court for both preliminary hearings and cases in which the defendant fails to appear for preliminary hearings will now be the same as in the other judicial districts. This rule change will address the unofficial practice that in Municipal Court prosecutors were given three times to get their cases through the preliminary hearing stages or the cases would be dismissed for lack of prosecution.

In addition, the Supreme Court issued an administrative directive to Municipal Court judges presiding over preliminary hearings:

· When determining the status of a case on the daily preliminary hearing list, judges must first ask defense counsel if they are ready to proceed and then determine if prosecutors are ready to proceed. This reverses the current rule.

· Judges may not continue preliminary hearings before 11 a.m. without the approval of both prosecutors and defense counsel.

· After all ready cases are heard, judges must conduct a second call and a third call to ascertain if there are any more cases that are ready to be heard. No case that is ready in the courtroom may be marked as "ready not reached," so all ready cases must be heard by the judges before they leave the bench.

These changes are in addition to the formation of a blue ribbon panel to study whether other changes should be made to procedures governing criminal cases in Philadelphia Municipal Court.

Normal
0

false
false
false

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4