Court Opinion

ID: 9652280
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:21:45.676005+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:49.907576
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority correctly states that a defendant can withdraw a guilty plea if, in the course of his decision to plead guilty, counsel failed to give effective assistance. Commonwealth v. Melton, 465 Pa. 529, 535, 351 A.2d 221, 224 (1976). The majority goes on to conclude it is not ineffectiveness for defense counsel to advise his client to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty without ever mentioning that the jury might have considered mitigating circumstances in deciding whether or not to impose a death sentence.
Appellant was twenty years old, with a ninth grade education, when he pleaded guilty to this crime. Age, youth, and lack of maturity are three specifically enumerated statutory mitigating circumstances. Even if we were to assume that the defendant would have pleaded guilty notwithstanding his being informed of possible mitigating circumstances, this should not relieve defense counsel of the need to inform a defendant that although the prosecutor is going to seek the death penalty, there is a possibility that the jury will find that the existence of mitigating circumstances, here age, youth, and lack of maturity, precludes imposition of the death penalty. We do not know if appellant would have been so intent on “saying anything to beat the death sentence” had he been fully apprised in this regard; had he *249known that mitigating circumstances was a possible means of avoiding the death penalty, he may have decided not to plead guilty.
Appellant’s attorney failed to give effective counsel, therefore appellant’s request to withdraw his plea of guilty should have been granted. I dissent.