Sixty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark decision established the right of poor defendants to an attorney and adequate legal defense. Nowhere is that constitutional right more flagrantly violated than in Pennsylvania. It’s one of only two states — South Dakota is the other — that provides no state funding, oversight or uniform standards for local public defenders or court-appointed attorneys.

Fairness in the legal system requires an even playing field, where truth emerges from the adversarial efforts of a competent prosecution and vigorous defense. That doesn’t happen in Pennsylvania. Instead, outgunned and underpaid defenders are often forced to cut corners and forgo expert witnesses and investigators. Cumbersome criminal caseloads push attorneys to settle cases quickly with a plea.

As noted by a 2011 bipartisan task force of state legislators, the issue is not the competency of defense attorneys for the indigent — many of them are outstanding — but the system that gives them neither the time nor the resources to mount a constitutionally adequate defense.

Vastly disparate spending among the state’s 67 counties, which pick up the entire tab for public defender offices, also means the quality of defense depends on locale. Philadelphia, for example, spends nearly 10 times more per capita on indigent defense than does Mifflin County. Allegheny County spends roughly $9.2 million, close to the average per-capita expenditure.

June 16 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that his deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, something he confirmed for the first time had already happened, was a reminder to the West that it could not inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. Speaking at Russia's flagship economic forum in St Petersburg, Putin said Russian tactical nuclear warheads had already been delivered to close ally Belarus, but stressed he saw no need for Russia to resort to nuclear weapons for now.

"As you know we were negotiating with our ally, (Belarusian President (Alexander) Lukashenko, that we would move a part of these tactical nuclear weapons to the territory of Belarus - this has happened," said Putin.

"The first nuclear warheads were delivered to the territory of Belarus. But only the first ones, the first part. But we will do this job completely by the end of the summer or by the end of the year."

The move, Moscow's first deployment of such warheads - shorter-range nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield - outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union was intended as a warning to the West about arming and supporting Ukraine, the Russian leader said.

The photograph was taken by Getty Images photographer Spencer Platt at a rally hosted by Trump in Pennsylvania in September 2022. Getty's caption did not identify the women in the photo, stating instead: "People gather to hear former president Donald Trump speak as he endorses local candidates at the Mohegan Sun Arena on September 03, 2022 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Trump still denies that he lost the election against President Joe Biden and has encouraged his supporters to doubt the election process. Trump has backed Senate candidate Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial hopeful Doug Mastriano."

We reached out to Getty Images in an attempt to determine the identity of the women in the photograph. A spokesperson told us, "... we can confirm that the image was taken on September 3, 2022 at a campaign rally hosted by former president Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. The photographer did not get the names of the women in the frame. All available details are included in the caption on our website."

We also reached out to Platt and the Florida District Court office and will update this post if we get more information. Platt spoke to Newsweek about the photograph and said that he could not recall taking the photo, as it was a while back. "That said, I highly doubt it was her as I always ask permission and can't believe a judge would agree. I think this is people getting all worked up," he said.

Given that we have no actual evidence connecting this photograph to Cannon, that Getty Images could not provide names for the women in the picture, and the original Slate caption was amended to stipulate that the women were not members of the judiciary, we rate this claim "Miscaptioned."

The case in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial was handed to the jury Thursday afternoon. The government presented their closing arguments in the morning, followed by the defense team for accused shooter Robert Bowers.

The jury of 12 men and women moved to deliberations around 2:30 p.m. Mr. Bowers faces 63 federal charges and the possibility of the death penalty in the Oct. 27, 2018 shooting in Squirrel Hill. On Thursday morning, attorney Mary Hahn steered jurors through the horrors of that day.

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The government’s closing arguments took jurors back through 11 days of testimony: The first-hand testimony from survivors, the harrowing descriptions from first responders, the damage the rifle bullets did to each victim’s body, and the hateful, antisemitic social media posts made by Mr. Bowers.

[Attorney Mary Hahn] called Mr. Bowers’ decisions and movements “cold, calculated, deliberate choices” that killed half of the people in the synagogue that morning in a matter of minutes.

HARRISBURG — Two Pennsylvania lawmakers have requested investigations into the state Gaming Control Board following a Spotlight PA story that detailed how top officials met privately with casino lobbyists about a major competitor and failed to disclose the meeting on public logs required by the regulatory agency’s ethics rules.

State Sen. Gene Yaw (R., Lycoming) and state Rep. Jared Solomon (D., Philadelphia) have asked the state attorney general’s office and the state Ethics Commission respectively to review the gaming board’s actions for compliance with the law, and review internal rules established to ensure the agency remains impervious to outside influence.

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Earlier this year, Spotlight PA reported that lobbyists for the state’s largest casino, Parx Casino in Bucks County, embarked on an intense, behind-the-scenes effort to get the Gaming Control Board to abandon its hands-off stance toward skill games. Skill games resemble slot machines and have proliferated over the past decade in convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants, social clubs, and other locations statewide.

Unlike slot machines and other casino gambling, skill games are not regulated by the Gaming Control Board. Nor are they taxed at the high rate that casino slots are. As a result, the skill games industry has become a prime target for some casino executives and their array of lobbyists, who argue the machines are illegal and should be banned in the state. Those executives have mounted a fierce campaign away from public view to convince officials to help them rid the state’s gambling landscape of skill games, according to emails and other documents obtained by Spotlight PA.

HARRISBURG — A court decision requiring Pennsylvania lawmakers to make the funding system for public schools more equitable is front and center in this year’s budget negotiations, but the issue will not be resolved by the looming deadline. Commonwealth Court ruled in February that the current school funding scheme is unconstitutional, but did not prescribe a solution, leaving it up to lawmakers to find an answer.

The budget has a deadline of June 30, and while some lawmakers hope to include extra education funding in deference to the court’s ruling, talks over a larger education overhaul are expected to last much longer. The Democrats who newly control the state House are pushing for a large funding increase, and also want to boost money specifically earmarked for the poorest districts.

Republicans are reluctant to spend down the commonwealth’s multibillion budget surplus, citing concerns about a possible economic downturn. Many also say they want any school overhaul to include more publicly funded scholarships for students to attend private or charter schools, a policy that many Democrats argue weakens public schools.

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Pennsylvania uses two different formulas to determine how much money goes to each school district. One is generally seen as outdated and unfair because it doles out cash based on 30-year-old enrollment numbers, which means it routes relatively more money to shrinking districts and less to ones that have grown in recent decades, and doesn’t account for factors like student poverty. The other is considered to be more responsive to districts’ needs, but it’s only used for funding that has been added to the budget since 2016.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promised Tuesday to help repair the East Coast’s main north-south highway as quickly as possible and said that the destruction of a section of I-95 will likely raise shipping costs because truckers must now travel longer routes. Speaking near the site where an out-of-control tractor-trailer hauling gasoline flipped over on an Interstate 95 off-ramp and caught fire, Mr. Buttigieg said he expected that disruptions in trucking routes will put “upward pressure” on costs along the East Coast.

Mr. Buttigieg toured the site and then, over the sounds of heavy machinery and demolition, told reporters that “every resource that is needed will be made available” to help Pennsylvania repair the bridge as quickly and safely as possible. The collapse is snarling traffic in Philadelphia as the summer travel season starts, upending hundreds of thousands of morning commutes, disrupting countless businesses and forcing trucking companies to find different routes.

One body was pulled from the wreckage. The resulting fire caused the collapse of the northbound lanes of I-95. The southbound lanes were compromised by the heat from the fire, authorities say. It could take weeks, at least, to replace the damaged and destroyed section.

Pennsylvania’s transportation secretary, Michael Carroll, said he expects to release a replacement plan on Wednesday for the roughly 100-foot-long section of I-95.

Seven SEPTA buses outfitted with AI-driven cameras have been monitoring bus lanes and stops along two Center City routes for illegally parked vehicles since late April, documenting an average of 4,000 blockages a week during a test of the enforcement technology, transit agency officials said.

No tickets or warnings are being issued as a result of the images captured on Routes 21 and 42. SEPTA is partnering on the study with Hayden AI, a Silicon Valley start-up that has installed its artificial intelligence cameras on buses in several large transit systems, including in New York and Washington.

“SEPTA is really excited about the possibility of improvements for our passengers: safety at bus stops, safety on the bus lanes, and then [reduced] congestion on the corridors so that we can get our buses moving more reliably,” said Matthew Zapson, SEPTA’s project manager for transit priority, which refers to strategies and technologies that enable transit vehicles to avoid congestion.

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The AI software activates the cameras to record the date, time, precise location and license plate numbers of vehicles only when it detects a violation, which it recognizes because it has mapped and learned the lanes and road-markings along the routes, Zapson said.



When cars or trucks park in bus-stop zones, the buses can’t get close to the curb so passengers have a clear, safe path to board their ride, Zapson said.