--- alias: - Pennsylvania Superior Court - Pa. Super. Ct. category: Law Enforcement & Legal created: 2026-09-23 location: Pennsylvania start: 1895 summary: Intermediate appellate court of Pennsylvania, established in 1895, which ruled on the Garzone and Mastromarino body-parts sentences in 2010 and on which Judge John B. Hannum sat before 1969. tags: - Organization - StateJudiciary - Court - Pennsylvania - Garzone - RCHorsch updated: 2026-09-23 --- The Superior Court of Pennsylvania is one of the two statewide intermediate appellate courts of Pennsylvania; the other is the Commonwealth Court. It was established in 1895 to hear appeals from the Courts of Common Pleas and relieve the caseload of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. It has fifteen judges, elected to ten-year terms.[^1][^2] ### Judges [John B. Hannum](/people/john-b-hannum/), a former chairman of the Chester County Republican Committee, sat on the court by appointment before [Richard Nixon](/people/richard-nixon/) named him to the [United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania](/organizations/united-states-district-court-for-the-eastern-district-of-pennsylvania/) in 1969. The Federal Judicial Center dates his service on the court to 1968 and 1969, and his *[Inquirer](/organizations/the-philadelphia-inquirer/)* obituary gives his appointment as 1967.[^3] ### The Body-Parts Appeals After [Gerald Garzone](/people/gerald-garzone/) and [Louis Garzone](/people/louis-garzone/) of the [Garzone Funeral Home](/organizations/garzone-funeral-home/) in Kensington pleaded guilty in 2008 to selling corpses to the tissue-recovery company of [Michael Mastromarino](/people/michael-mastromarino/), the trial court, on a motion by the [Commonwealth](/organizations/philadelphia-district-attorneys-office/), ordered each to pay about 90,000 dollars in costs, most of it the salaries of the assistant district attorneys and county detectives assigned to the case. On April 13, 2010, in an opinion by Judge Stevens, the court vacated the salary portion in Gerald Garzone's case and affirmed the rest: "although the crimes in this case are particularly heinous, if the General Assembly intended to permit such recovery of regularly paid salaries of assistant district attorneys and detectives to be costs associated with the prosecution, the Legislature would have expressly done so." It ruled in Louis Garzone's appeal the next day. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed on January 19, 2012.[^4][^5][^6] Mastromarino had been sentenced in Philadelphia on October 22, 2008, to 25 to 58 years, concurrent with his sentence in [New York](/places/new-york-city/), including consecutive sentences on 32 of 244 theft counts and aggravated sentences for abuse of corpse. The court affirmed the sentence on July 21, 2010, again in an opinion by Judge Stevens.[^7] In the [Olney House Investigation](/events/olney-house-investigation/) of 2026, police examined the access of the pornographer [R.C. Horsch](/people/rc-horsch/) to the Garzone crematorium in the years before 2007.[^8] ### Post-Conviction Appeals The firm of the Philadelphia defense lawyer [Jerome Brown](/people/jerome-brown/), counsel to R.C. Horsch in 2009 and to his son [Eugene Horsch](/people/eugene-horsch/) in 2026, advertises two post-conviction victories in the court resting on alleged detective misconduct, *Commonwealth v. Silverman* (2019) and *Commonwealth v. Ronald Thomas* (2020).[^9] [^1]: Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania, "Superior Court." https://www.pacourts.us/courts/superior-court [^2]: "Pennsylvania Superior Court: Over 125 Years of Justice," Jenkins Law Library, December 1, 2023. https://www.jenkinslaw.org/blog/2023/12/01/pennsylvania-superior-court-over-125-years-justice [^3]: Federal Judicial Center, Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges, "Hannum, John Berne." https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/hannum-john-berne; Downey, Sally A. "John B. Hannum, 92, judge," *The Philadelphia Inquirer,* April 25, 2007. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/obituaries/20070425_John_B__Hannum__92__judge.html [^4]: Commonwealth v. Garzone (Gerald Garzone), 993 A.2d 306, 2010 PA Super 57 (Pa. Super. Ct., filed April 13, 2010), opinion of Stevens, J. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12429640407209552656 [^5]: Commonwealth v. Garzone (Louis Garzone), 993 A.2d 1245 (Pa. Super. Ct., filed April 14, 2010), No. 780 EDA 2009. [^6]: Commonwealth v. Garzone, 34 A.3d 67, 613 Pa. 481 (Pa. 2012), opinion of Castille, C.J., decided January 19, 2012. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=13924150246787701071 [^7]: Commonwealth v. Mastromarino, 2 A.3d 581, 2010 PA Super 128 (Pa. Super. Ct., filed July 21, 2010), opinion of Stevens, J. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1483314488518887260 [^8]: Briggs, Ryan W., Max Marin, Barbara Laker, and Ellie Rushing. "Raymond Horsch had access to a Kensington crematorium linked to illegal body parts sales, years before missing persons investigation," *The Philadelphia Inquirer,* September 21, 2026. https://www.inquirer.com/news/raymond-horsch-missing-women-kensington-bodies-crematorium-20260921.html [^9]: Law Offices of Jerome Michael Brown, firm website. https://jeromebrownlaw.com/