Public Defender Spotlight

October 31, 2024 – Our Public Defender Spotlights shout out and celebrate the achievements of individual members of the PDAP community, whether past or recent. If you’d like to nominate a fellow Public Defender (attorney, social service advocate, investigator, mitigator, or support staff member) for a feature, reach out to Anna@PAPublicDefenders.com.

On May 13, 2024, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided that the Commonwealth cannot rely on inadmissible hearsay alone to establish the identity of the defendant at a preliminary hearing. PDAP recently spoke with Defender Association of Philadelphia Appellate Attorney Katherine Muns, who successfully argued and drafted Commonwealth v. Harris, the case which led to this decision. Katherine wrote the appeal alongside Attorney Leonard Sosnov. 

At Ronald Harris’s preliminary hearing, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania elected to proceed without the testimony of the complaining witness, an individual who never showed up to court to testify. The judge had to rely solely on the testimony of two police officers who had seen the alleged victim with a gunshot wound and bullets on the ground. Harris’s trial attorney argued that not enough evidence existed to establish the identity of the defendant, and Harris was eventually sentenced to house arrest; however, he still spent 18 months in jail before this sentencing. These kinds of consequences can be avoided when courts raise their standard for the credibility of evidence needed to establish identity, as Katherine Muns points out in our interview with her.

Speaking with Andrew Capone (PDAP’s Assistant Training Director for Western Pennsylvania), Katherine explains how her argument led the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to determine that a defendant’s identity cannot be established on hearsay alone. She also provides valuable insight on the implications of this decision in future preliminary hearings and discusses how far we still have to go in defining what counts as hearsay as opposed to valid evidence.

“For hearsay in preliminary hearings, the big, gaping question is: how much hearsay is too much?” she says. “That question remains unanswered, and the Commonwealth really, really pushed the Supreme Court to answer it in this case. The Superior Court tried to answer it… but continuing to object and make a good record where you can still raise that argument of ‘how much is too much?’ [is important].”

The outcome of Commonwealth v. Harris serves as a great reminder of why Public Defenders like Katherine, along with the work they do, are so vital to shaping the future of the criminal legal process. Thanks to her efforts, Pennsylvania courts can set a higher standard for preliminary evidence, and fewer clients will face jail time for “a case they’re never going to be able to go to trial on.”

You can check out our full interview with Katherine Muns here or by clicking on the photo above.