Law Office of Margaret M. Grasso

04/15/2025

I am pleased to announce that following a 4 week trial in U.S.District Court for the E.D.Pa., the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts against my client. My client, a foreign medical graduate, was alleged to have been part of a pill mill conspiracy and was charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances outside the usual course of professional practice and for no legitimate medical purpose. I am ecstatic for my client that he can now get on with his life and that justice was served!

06/10/2020

My dad retired from the Phila. PD as an Inspector after nearly 40 years on the job. As a kid, I can remember him talking about his FOP chiefs (i.e. police union leaders). I can remember their faces from the news. They were all white. Since becoming a criminal defense lawyer, all the Phila. FOP chiefs have been white. I’ve dealt with Phila. PD Internal Affairs officers in civil rights cases and all the high-level supervisors were white. The significance of the exclusion of blacks from these positions is highlighted in this article. Police unions are a major barrier to police reform. If the police unions cannot be disbanded, then there must be black leadership.

Even in the 15 largest departments where the majority of officers are people of color, only one union leader is black, our analysis shows.

06/09/2020

Thrilled to be back in a real courtroom even with social distancing measures in place

05/20/2020

I had the pleasure of spending nearly 4 months with Joe trying a multi-defendant racketeering case. He was one of a kind. He will be missed.

Mr. Santaguida had a long and colorful career representing notorious players in the city’s criminal underworld, including mobsters Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino and Joseph “Mousie” Massimino, and Hakeem Bey, the violent leader of a South Philadelphia drug gang.

12/03/2019

I’ve been seeing this unfold firsthand...While the debate over criminal punishment for drug use and minor possession will continue, Krazner is proving that in many cases treatment over punishment is beneficial not only to the individual offender but to society as a whole.

“We’re on the cusp of sending every single case involving mere possession of drugs to diversion,” Krasner said. “We want to get people into treatment to get at underlying problems to stop criminal behavior.”

11/09/2019

A police officer’s alleged smell of ma*****na should not constitute probable cause to search a vehicle.

“Marijuana seems like an easy way to get [access] to a car,” said assistant defender Michael Mellon. “There’s no way to prove ... that they didn’t smell it. It becomes a crutch to justify anything.”

10/09/2019

Sadly, coerced confessions resulting in convictions are still a frequent reality. This man is now free but only after nearly 30 years behind bars.

Wednesday morning, Willie Veasy’s long-running appeal reached its final step, as a city judge ruled that his conviction should be tossed out.