Punishing people who pose “no public safety risk” is another way of saying that life without parole achieves no legitimate purpose in felony murder cases. A brief filed by a group of academic experts on the Eighth Amendment adds that“no penological purpose justifies Pennsylvania’s mandate of...
Murder at the Motel: With Brian Dives, Gary Neidermeier, John Powers, Patrick Seidel. Many American motels have become places where transience and anonymity often go hand-in-hand. Murder at the Motel explores tragic murder cases set in motels and the pur
Cases of madness and even murder were associated with Hexerei, a form of witchcraft brought to Pennsylvania by German immigrants. Following up onour previous examination of the tradition of Braucherei or Pow-Wowas practiced in 18th and 19th century Pennsylvania, our current episode eplores some ...
that no matter how advanced the technology, people will always have the means of killing other people — and of killing themselves. In this essay I want to focus on murder (homicide), which is the tenth leading cause of death for males in the United States (much less common for females)...
In Pennsylvania, the act of April 22, 1794, 3 Smith's Laws, 186, makes "all murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration or attempt to...
Handguns are by far the most common murder weapon used in the United States, accounting for 7,159 homicides in 2023. This is followed by firearms of an unstated type, with 5,295 cases in that year. Why do murders happen in the U.S.? While most of the time the circumstances of mu...
Last month in Berks County, Pennsylvania, Lisa Snyder, 41, was found guilty of a double homicide for killing her two children. Her defense had insisted that she couldn’t have understood that what she did was wrong. Yet, the staged suicide had to have been planned, and she’d created an...
Arthur J. Bomar Jr. is a repeat offender who was in and out of the justice system multiple times. After being paroled from a Nevada prison in 1990, following a second-degree murder conviction, he may have been ininvolved in three murdersthat occurred in Pennsylvania. Then, a few years l...
In addition to applauding the work of the Pennsylvania State Police on this investigation, I want to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of Assistant District Attorney Geoff Paine, who leads our office’s review of cold cases. These cases can feel hopeless, but as today’s charges make ...
Apprentice to Murder: Directed by Ralph L. Thomas. With Donald Sutherland, Chad Lowe, Mia Sara, Knut Husebø. The small beautiful Pennsylvania Dutch community is rocked by a series of bizarre events which lead to a web of deception, violence and murder