Pittsburgh v. Pierce

Citations

• 69 Pa. Super. 520
• 1918 Pa. Super. LEXIS 124

Syllabus

<p>Appeals — Academic question — Summary conviction — Suspicious person — Quashing appeal.</p> <p>An appeal which presents merely an academic question will be quashed.</p> <p>Where a person is summarily convicted by a police magistrate in Allegheny County of being a suspicious person, and pays a fine under protest, but thereafter the County Court on appeal, although adjudging the defendant not to be a suspicious person, holds as a matter of law that the question as to whether he was a suspicious person was to be determined by the circumstances as they appeared at the time of the arrest, and not upon facts as they appeared at the time of the hearing, and subsequently the court enters an order, obviously pro forma for purposes of an appeal, adjudging the defendant guilty, and imposing a fine upon him, an appeal from such order will be quashed, inasmuch as its only purpose is to have the appellate court decide academically the question of law referred to by the court below.</p> <p>Appeals — Gounty Court of Allegheny County — Certiorari—Summary conviction — Quashing appeal — Certification to Supreme Court.</p> <p>There is nothing in the legislation relative to the County Court of Allegheny County which vests the Superior Court with jurisdiction to hear an appeal from a judgment of the County Court acquitting and discharging a defendant who had been summarily convicted before a magistrate.</p> <p>The statutes permitting exceptions in criminal cases do not apply to summary convictions. They are reviewed upon certiorari which brings up only the record of which the evidence is no part. Where such a record is brought up by certiorari to the Superior Court, that court is without authority to certify the case to the Supreme Court.</p>