Opinion ID: 2322573
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Waiver under the PCHA

Text: In Commonwealth v. Snyder, 427 Pa. 83, 89 n.4, 233 A. 2d 530 (1967), we defined the concept of waiver as embodied in section 4 of the PCHA in the same manner as the term had been applied by the Supreme Court of the United States in Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 9 L. Ed. 2d 837 (1963), but at the same time we recognize that [t]he federal standard . . . applicable to federal habeas corpus petitions by state prisoners is not a constitutional requirement for the states . . . . See also Commonwealth v. Satchell, 430 Pa. 443, 446, 243 A. 2d 381 (1968). In Noia the Supreme Court held that when adjudicating petitions for writs of habeas corpus filed by state prisoners, the federal judiciary has power to reach all questions alleging deprivation of federally guaranteed rights. It went on to say that the lower courts should, in their discretion, refuse to exercise that power when it appears that the state petitioner has deliberately by-passed the orderly procedure of the state courts and in so doing has forfeited his state court remedies. Noia, supra, 372 U.S. at 438. By aligning our State's concept of section 4 waiver under the PCHA with that used in the federal courts, this Court sought to insure that the occasions would be few when the federal courts, in considering petitions for habeas corpus filed by prisoners incarcerated by this Commonwealth, would find it necessary to reach and decide issues which our State courts had refused to decide on the merits. [8] Thus, when reaching a decision whether appellant has waived his procedural right to raise in this PCHA proceeding the issue of the legality of his arrest, we are guided not only by our own precedents interpreting the language of the PCHA, but also by the federal precedents interpreting the deliberate by-pass language of Fay v. Noia . [9]