D'ALESSANDRO v. Pennsylvania State Police
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · No. 131 MAP 2005 · 937 A.2d 404
👎Unfavorable to gun rights
the evidentiary holding rejected the applicant's position and sustained the domestic-violence basis for the license denial; the excerpt shows the holding, not the formal disposition
GunMapUSA assessment of the outcome's direction, not a statement that the court decided rightly or wrongly.
What the court held
The Pennsylvania State Police denied D'Alessandro a license to carry, treating his 1989 simple assault conviction as a federally disqualifying misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, which turned on whether the victim lived with him. The Commonwealth Court had held the police report's description of the victim as his "live-in girlfriend" inadmissible hearsay; the Pennsylvania Supreme Court majority held the statement admissible under the Judicial Code's public-records exception, finding nothing in the report indicating a lack of trustworthiness. A concurrence agreed on the ground that the statement was a party admission nested in a public record, and two justices dissented on the view that the officer recorded an inference rather than a fact.
Summarized from the court's opinion.
What this case is about
denial of a Pennsylvania license to carry a firearm based on a prior simple assault conviction
GunMapUSA summary of the issue, not a quotation from the court.
Key Dates
- 2007-11-21 — Decided
Sources
- CourtListener — retrieved 2026-08-08
Summary of public court records. Not legal advice.