The Court of Common Pleas - Trial Division is composed of seventy
commissioned judges. The judges in commission are supplemented b the
services of senior judges. The Division is divided into two sections -
Civil and Criminal. Forty-one commissioned judges are
assigned to the criminal programs and twenty-nine are assigned to
civil programs. There are approximately one-thousand employees in the
many separate departments throughout the Trial Division.
Office of the Administrative Judge
The Trial Division is led by an Administrative Judge, who is appointed
by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and serves at the
pleasure of the Supreme Court. On April 1, 2007, Judge D. Webster Keogh was appointed Administrative Judge for a three year
term.
In April, 2007 the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania named Judge D. Webster Keogh Administrative Judge of the Trial Division, Court of Common Pleas. As Administrative Judge, he is the approving authority for all administrative matters associated with the Trial Division.
After spending seven years in the District Attorney's Office and thirteen years in private practice, in 1991, Administrative Judge Keogh was appointed to the bench in the Court of Common Pleas by then Governor Casey. Judge Keogh was later elected to the bench in 1993 and retained for second term in November, 2003. He served as section leader for major felony prosecutions before being assigned to the major trial section of the Civil Trial Division in 2000. Judge Keogh was named Supervising Judge of the Criminal Trial Division in 2001.
A graduate of LaSalle University, Judge Keogh received his Juris Doctor from Mercer University Law School. His fraternal memberships include the Brehon Law Society, the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the Irish Society, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Alumni Association, and the LaSalle University Law Alumni Association. He has been elected three times to the Executive Committee of the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges. In 1985 and again in 1996, he was appointed to the House of Delegates for the Pennsylvania Bar Association. He has served as the Governor's appointee to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency's Deputy Sheriff's Education and Training Board since 1996 and as the Chief Justice's representative on the Governor's Commission to Address Gun Violence.
Administrative Judge Keogh has been a continuing legal education presenter on the "Pennsylvania Rules of Evidence," an instructor for Temple University on "Ethics and the Law," and a PBI faculty presenter at the Philadelphia Bar Association's Bench-Bar Conference.
On November 16, 2004, Judge Keogh was the recipient of the prestigious John Peter Zenger Award in recognition of his outstanding judicial service.
Judge Keogh is married with three sons.
The duties of the Administrative Judge of the Trial Division include
but are not limited to:
Assignment of judges within the Trial Division, along with
designation and use of all rooms assigned to the Division for
judicial use, excepting chambers for each judge;
Oversight of case management practices in both the civil and criminal sections;
Personnel administration within the Trial Division;
Preparation and analysis of periodic reports of facts and
statistics concerning the disposition of cases;
Coordination of the use of technology to expedite the timely
disposition of cases;
The Administrative Judge of the Trial Division sits on the First
Judicial District's Administrative Governing Board, which
functions much like a Board of Directors for the District. The Board
includes the three president judges, three administrative judges, and
the State Court Administrator.
The Office of the Administrative Judge is located in 516 City
Hall. The phone number is 215-686-2602 and the fax number is
215-686-7049.
The Supervising Judge of Civil is the Honorable Esther R. Sylvester.
Civil has jurisdiction over actions at law and equity along with
appeals from Municipal Court and certain administrative
agencies and boards. The Trial Division Civil has jurisdiction over civil
claims involving amounts in excess of $10,000. The variety of civil
actions that may be brought in the Trial Division Civil include Negligence, Contract
and Equity Action.
The Supervising Judge of Criminal is the Honorable Pamela P. Dembe.
Criminal has jurisdiction over all felony cases as well as appeals
from Municipal Court for a trial de novo, including a
right to a trial by jury. Among the types of cases that fall within
the assignments of the Trial Division Criminal are homicide cases,
capital PCRA cases and felony cases. The Probation
Department and Pretrial
Services are included in the Criminal Section of the Division.
