Pa. Supreme Court ends an ‘insidious trend’

In a move that will spare thousands of crime victims from having to testify at early court hearings, the state Supreme Court has ordered judges across the state to accept the testimony of police officers, rather than victims, at preliminary hearings for defendants accused of property crimes.

The change, enacted in a unanimous vote by the high court, will begin in 30 days.

"This is monumental," said Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery, who pushed the measure along with Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille. "This will make things more just for the victims and the accused and make for a more efficient system."

District Attorney Seth Williams detailed the new policy Friday during a news conference. He also helped unveil a new "bench book" for judges, giving them practical and legal advice on how to spot and quell witness-intimidation in their courtrooms.

"These two - the new rules and the bench book - are monumental," Williams said. "They're monumental because we are going to hold more defendants accountable for their behavior."

At the news conference, Justice McCaffery said the changes were "a direct result" of articles in The Inquirer on the criminal justice system, especially a December 2009 series entitled Justice: Delayed, Dismissed, Denied. The paper said that witness fatigue and outright threats against them had contributed to a court system with one of the nation's lowest conviction rates.

McCaffery, a former administrative judge of Municipal Court, said the rule's effect will be especially significant in Philadelphia, where judges often require extensive testimony at preliminary hearings, forcing victims to come to court repeatedly and leading many to simply give up. In the city alone, as many as 7,000 yearly victims of car thefts, burglaries and other property crimes, would be spared initial court appearances as police officers stood in for them.

Victims would still have to appear at trial, where a prosecutors must prove criminal cases beyond a reasonable doubt. But at preliminary hearings, where prosecutors must merely show that a crime was "more likely than not" to have occurred, victims' testimony will not be required.

McCaffery said the new policy would end "an insidious trend" in Philadelphia, where victims of property crime have been ordered to come to court for hearings that are often postponed repeatedly. Prosecutors and even some defense lawyers, say such postponements are often spurious, a defense tactic aimed at wearing down witnesses in the hope that they will not show up for the next hearing.

"This was the type of creative trial advocacy that a lot of members of the defense bar practices to get the case continued," said McCaffery. The new rule would end that practice in the early stages of a case by allow hearings to go forward in a victim's absence. The change should result in fewer postponements, less police overtime and swifter dispositions of criminal cases, he said.