Court Opinion

ID: 9709003
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:37:43.823421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:45.313686
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I agree with the majority that appellant should be resentenced. However, I should also remand for a hearing in accordance with Commonwealth v. Twiggs, 460 Pa. 105, 331 A.2d 440 (1975) on the question whether appellant’s counsel at the revocation hearing was ineffective for failing to argue to the lower court that the delay between the sentence for robbery and the revocation hearing violated Pa.R. Crim.P. 1409, which requires that a revocation hearing be held “as speedily as possible.”
In deciding whether counsel was ineffective, we start by asking whether there were reasonable grounds upon which to advance the omitted claims. Commonwealth v. Hubbard, 472 Pa. 259, 372 A.2d 687 (1977).
[Ojnce we conclude that the omitted contention is of arguable merit, our inquiry into the substance of the claim ceases and shifts to an analysis of post-trial counsel’s basis for decision. If it cannot be determined from the record whether a satisfactory basis for the omission exists than *353[sic] a remand for an evidentiary hearing on that question is proper [cites].
Here, I cannot say that a claim based on unlawful delay would have been without “arguable merit.” In considering how much delay is unlawful, the cases have reached varying results which depend on the facts of the particular case rather than on a per se cutoff point after which a revocation hearing will be found to have been unduly delayed. See Commonwealth v. Waters, 252 Pa.Super. 357, 381 A.2d 957 (1977) (dissenting opinion by SPAETH, J., discussing cases). Unlike the defendants in cases so far decided, appellant was out on bail as he awaited his probation violation hearing in May.* One could make a claim of at least arguable merit that for such a probationer, the delay in holding the revocation hearing must be relatively brief. Thus, a probationer who while awaiting his probation violation hearing is imprisoned for another offense will not suffer much from a delay in holding the revocation hearing, for he is in prison anyway; but when the probationer is on bail, the question of whether he may “go about his business” in the outside world or must go to prison should be resolved more quickly.
CERCONE, J., joins in this opinion.

 By the time of the continued hearing in September, however, he was in jail pending disposition of a new charge.