Court Opinion

ID: 9640551
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:08:10.140247+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:30.310329
License: Public Domain

McEWEN, P.J.E.,
concurring and dissenting.
¶ 1 The author of the Majority Opinion has undertaken a persuasive expression of rationale. I am compelled to dissent, however, from that part of the Opinion that expands the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision in Commonwealth v. Grant, 813 A.2d 726 (Pa.2002).
*710¶ 2 Appellant, in the brief he has submitted to this Court, has presented two questions for our review, specifically:
Was trial counsel ineffective for failing to call Cindy Maseth as a witness at trial when if called to testify she would have testified that the victim had made previous statements regarding removing the defendant from her life so that she could get married and go on with her life? Does the proposed testimony of Donny Sasinowski constitute substantial after discovered evidence as he would have testified that the •victim had made previous statements regarding removing the defendant from her life so that she could move on with her life without him?
The Majority quite correctly declares that the challenge posed in the first question should be rejected “without prejudice to Kohan’s assertion of his ineffectiveness claim in the contexts of a petition timely filed under the Post Conviction Relief Act.” However, after careful consideration of the second question, I agree with the Commonwealth that appellant has failed to support this request for relief, and has not established the predicate requirements for obtaining a new trial on the basis of a claim of after-discovered evidence. See: Commonwealth v. Pursell, 555 Pa. 233, 259-60, 724 A.2d 293, 306-07 (1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 975, 120 S.Ct. 422, 145 L.Ed.2d 330 (1999).6
¶ 3 I am not aware of any judicial authority for the declaration of the majority that “Kohan was not required to raise this claim of after-discovered evidence in this direct appeal”. Rather, in my view, this declaration composes an extension of the heretofore limited rule announced by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Grant, supra. So certain an extension of a limited rule7 should not be pronounced by this Court but from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.8
114 Thus it is that I dissent.

. This not to say, however, that appellant could not make out a claim of layered ineffectiveness in an ensuing PCRA proceeding.

. In Commonwealth v. Mason, 559 Pa. 500, 517-18, 741 A.2d 708, 717-18 (1999), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 829, 121 S.Ct. 81, 148 L.Ed.2d 43 (2000), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court addressed an after-discovered claim that was presented in the same procedural posture as the present case.

.It is "the duty and obligation” of the Superi- or Court "to follow the decisional law” of the Supreme Court. Commonwealth v. Shaffer, 557 Pa. 453, 460, n. 6, 734 A.2d 840, 844, n. 6 (1999).