In an unanimous (3-0) panel decision the Superior Court has just issued a decision reversing an order of restitution where the Commonwealth presented no evidence to support the alleged amount and the Trial Judge placed the burden on the Defendant to prove why the amount was not accurate. The facts were that Christopher Atanasio pled guilty to simple assault on Donald Eisenhart and pled nolo contendre to simple assault on Heather Souder, who sustained a punch to the face while trying to break up the attack on Eisenhart. Souder sought medical treatment for a broken ankle three days after the incident.
After Atanasio was sentenced to state prison, a hearing was held on the $3,000 claim of medical expenses for the ankle fracture. The Commonwealth failed to produce any witnesses or evidence either at sentencing or the Sentence Modification hearing on the extent or causation of the claimed injury, and the Court placed the burden on the Defense to show why the claimed amount of restitution was unreasonable. Atanasio asserted that due process was violated by the trial court demanding he provide evidence to support his challenge and not requiring any evidence from the prosecution. In overturning the Order, the Superior Court agreed that the burden of proving entitlement to restitution lies with the prosecution.

The United States Government has been systematically chipping away at Constitutional rights for many years. In yet another assault on privacy and individual rights, the House passed a Bill, by unanimous vote of all Democratic members, that will require people who have been arrested but never convicted to have their blood drawn by needle, analyzed, and kept in a DNA database. While it will be nice to have more DNA to investigate serious crimes, people who have been wrongly accused and exonerated should not have to withstand the additional insult of providing blood samples to be kept in a DNA database.

Many people do not contemplate the consequences of disposing of an old copier or scanner. While they take great pains to “scrub” or destroy the hard drives of their old computers, they simply discard copiers and scanners without a thought about the consequences. As a recent CBS News report, http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6412572n&tag=related;photovideo, warned, old copiers are a new source of data for identity theft. The CBS report shows shocking footage of documents recovered from a Buffalo Police Department copier (sex crimes unit arrest reports, Narcotics offense police reports, etc), individual medical records containing test results and diagnoses, etc. The risk of identity theft in these situations is great, and companies should realize that disposing of a copier without scrubbing the hard drive is a lawsuit waiting to happen