By JEFFREY ROSEN
Published: July 19, 2010

Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree. Snyder sued, arguing that the university had violated her First Amendment rights by penalizing her for her (perfectly legal) after-hours behavior. But in 2008, a federal district judge rejected the claim, saying that because Snyder was a public employee whose photo didn’t relate to matters of public concern, her “Drunken Pirate” post was not protected speech.
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BY TERESA ANN BOECKEL
Daily Record/Sunday News
Updated: 07/10/2010 11:27:54 PM EDT

York County’s district attorney likes having the option; defense lawyers would like to see the mandatory minimum repealed.

Most of the City of York falls within a drug-free school zone, so an adult convicted of even a first-time offense could face time in state prison.

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On April 16, 2010, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted Attorney Andrew Shubin’s petition for allocatur in Commonwealth v. Zortman, a 2006 drug trafficking case prosecuted by the Attorney General’s office. The Supreme Court will hear argument on whether Zortman, the then girlfriend of a Clearfield County drug dealer, should be hit with a five year mandatory minimum state prison sentence based upon the presence of an inoperable firearm in the residence. Shubin, who represented Zortman in the appellate proceedings, expects the case to be briefed and argued before the end of the year.

Amends Titles 18 (Crimes & Offenses) & 42 (Judiciary) further providing for expungement of criminal history record and for juvenile records; and providing for expungement fee.
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In taking leadership stand, we must welcome students
Elizabeth Goreham

From its beginning State College has been a college town welcoming students and embracing their traditions. That is why our fraternity district was built within a neighborhood where professors and their families lived, frequently with student tenants. Our downtown grew naturally across the street from Penn State.

Over time the increase of students outpaced the population of the town and now students outnumber permanent residents. This makes the once easy connection with students more difficult, sometimes impossible. Still, just about everybody who lives here has a proud connection to Penn State.

Student life commonly includes drinking. In the past few years, however, dangerous drinking has accelerated. Issues related to alcohol abuse threaten the high standard of living neighborhoods have traditionally enjoyed.
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Former Daily Collegian photographer Maxwell Kruger, Class of 2009, entered the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) program Monday at the Centre County Courthouse, ending the two years he spent in the Centre County legal system in connection to the 2008 Ohio State riot.

Kruger, who was not on the Collegian staff at the time of the riot, was charged in 2008 with two counts of felony riot, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and criminal mischief, according to court documents.

But in September 2009 both felony counts and the count of misdemeanor failure to disperse were dismissed, according to court documents.

Kruger’s attorney Andrew Shubin did not comment on the terms of Kruger’s entrance into the ARD program, but he said this leaves Kruger with no criminal history in connection to the riot.

FOCUS ON EXCESSIVE DRINKING
Community must find solutions together
Damon Sims and Tom Fountaine

One irony about the problem of dangerous drinking among Penn State students is that it can be either a wedge dividing town and gown or a common cause that binds our community as one.
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Sara Ganim
STATE COLLEGE — Scott Marion never thought selling $35 worth of marijuana to a college buddy might land him in state prison for more than two years.

Sentencing guidelines for that kind of crime call for probation to 30 days in county jail — with one huge exception.

If you are caught selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school, state law says prosecutors can seek a two-year mandatory minimum sentence.

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By Peter Goldberger and Anna Durbin

The forum held in Marshall Auditorium on Friday evening, September 4, provided an opportunity for students to air some of their questions about legal issues arising in the wake of the previous night’s State Police “alcohol awareness” raid on an indoor-outdoor party at Lloyd Hall. As career criminal defense lawyers and longtime friends of Haverford College (one of us an alum from the Class of 1971 and the other an experienced local attorney for many arrested students over the last decade), we were invited to participate in the forum as legal resources. This op-ed shares some of what we had to say. The reader must understand, however, that all of the information in this column is necessarily very general and superficial; it is no substitute for individual, confidential legal counseling, tailored to the facts and circumstances of a particular person’s situation.

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July 27, 2009

PENNSYLVANIA — A photographer at Pennsylvania State University’s Daily Collegian was cleared of his remaining failure to disperse charge July 22 in a pre-trial motion after he was arrested last fall while covering a post-football-game riot.

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