Commonwealth v. Upshur

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided June 20, 2007

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 2007-06-20

Relies on 2005 Pa. Super. 300 - Commonwealth v. Upshur

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2007-06-20

How this case has been cited

Cited by 29 later decisions — most recently October 2025 · most notably Rosado v. Bridgeport Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp. (2009), J.D. Grine v. County of Centre, The McShane Firm, LLC and T.C. Tanski Appeal of: County of Centre K. Gillette-Walker v. County of Centre, Shubin Law Office, P.C., and S.P. McGraw Appeal of: County of Centre (2016)

29 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Justice FITZGERALD

¶1dissenting.

¶2I respectfully dissent. I believe that providing the media with copies of evidence for public dissemination during trial court proceedings can severely undermine the integrity of a criminal trial. I would affirm the Superior Court’s holding reversing the trial court’s order in this case, especially because the audiotape was never entered into evidence or otherwise filed with the court and made part of the record, despite the fact that it was played during the preliminary hearing. See Commonwealth v. Upshur, 882 A.2d 499, 503 (Pa.Super.2005). Although I do not oppose release of a transcript of the tape, I do not view the tape itself as a “public judicial record” subject to public access under the circumstances.