What is the disposition of criminal case files for Philip Godlewski in Lackawanna County Court in 2020?
Executive summary
In 2020 criminal charges involving Philip Godlewski were filed and processed in Lackawanna County — he was arraigned on theft by deception, forgery and related charges after an alleged $21,789.84 bad check transaction (reported in February 2020) and the case appears on the Pennsylvania Unified Judicial System docket for 2020 [1] [2]. Public records and subsequent reporting show that those criminal matters did not terminate in 2020 but led to a later conviction and sentencing in mid‑2021 [3] [4].
1. How the 2020 files appeared in court: arraignment and docket entries
Local reporting states that Philip Godlewski surrendered and was arraigned in February 2020 on charges including theft by deception and forgery after investigators alleged he issued a $21,789.84 check while his account held only about $267.95, and that he provided an altered bank statement to the seller [1]. The Pennsylvania Judiciary’s public portal lists court docket pages tied to a 2020 docket number for Lackawanna County (CP‑35‑CR‑0000664‑2020), confirming that criminal case files for Godlewski existed in the county system in 2020 [2]. Pennsylvania’s UJS site is the official repository the public uses to view individual case information [5] [6].
2. What “disposition” means here and what the records show (or don’t show)
Disposition in court records typically denotes how charges were resolved — dismissal, plea, conviction, sentencing, or transfer — and while the UJS portal entry establishes the presence of a 2020 criminal docket for Godlewski, the portal snippets provided do not include a final disposition line for the 2020 docket in the supplied materials [2]. Independent local news coverage from 2020 documents arraignment and the alleged offense but does not itself record a case disposition during that calendar year [1]. The public records framework and UJS search tools confirm where dispositions would be posted, but the sources provided do not reproduce a 2020 closing entry on the docket [5] [6].
3. Subsequent outcome tied to the 2020 matter: conviction and sentence reported in 2021
While the 2020 filings did not appear to conclude within that same year, later reporting and docket references show a concrete outcome: a judge ordered Godlewski to serve one month in jail, three months of house arrest, and four years’ probation in June 2021 in connection with the bad‑check case, indicating the criminal file that originated in 2020 resulted in conviction/sentencing in 2021 [3]. A related Lackawanna County docket entry also shows court activity and an order directing participation in the county house arrest program with a printed date referencing June 22, 2021, further corroborating the sentencing timeline [4].
4. Context, limits of available reporting and related civil litigation
Beyond the criminal bad‑check matter, Godlewski has been involved in long‑running civil and criminal dockets in Lackawanna County, including earlier criminal case numbers from 2010 that have separate, extensive records and appeals material [4] [7]. Some later civil litigation and counterclaims involving Godlewski and third parties, reported years after 2020, show overlapping allegations and separate legal tracks [8] [7]. The sources available here definitively show charges were filed and arraigned in 2020 [1] [2] and that the criminal matter proceeded to sentencing in 2021 [3] [4], but the supplied docket extracts do not display a discrete “disposed in 2020” disposition entry; therefore the precise administrative disposition date within the official UJS docket for 2020 cannot be confirmed from the supplied documents alone [2] [5].