Madison Lara v. Commissioner PA State Police

Oral argument

• Argued

  50 min recording
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Source: CourtListener oral-argument corpus (CC0).

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding refusal to continue evidentiary hearing was abuse of discretion where, among other things, absent government witnesses were on vacation and would be available to testify in two business days
• noting that some of the benefits of live testimony include the ability “to see the witness’s physical reactions to questions, to assess the witness’s demeanor, and to hear the tone of the witness’s voice”
• “There can be no doubt that seeing a witness testify live assists the finder of fact in evaluating the witness’s credibility.”
• “If any ruling that forms a basis for the conditional [guilty] plea is found to be erroneous, we are required to permit the defendant to with- draw his plea.”
• “The most critical question is whether Mejia was prejudiced by the district court’s refusal to grant his request for a continuance. We may not reverse unless the party whose request was denied suffered prejudice.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).