Court Opinion

ID: 9706191
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:33:45.065214+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:20.044019
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice CASTILLE,
concurring.
I join the Majority Opinion in its entirety. I write solely in response to Mr. Justice Baer’s Dissenting Opinion.
The latter part of the Dissenting Opinion makes some thoughtful points, albeit on an issue and theory of relief not raised or briefed by the parties, i.e., whether this case should be deemed subject to the Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”), 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-9546, at all, or should fall within traditional habeas corpus review. The availability of habeas corpus review in instances where the PCRA effectively is unavailable is a point I have addressed in other eases. See Coady v. Vaughn, 564 Pa. 604, 770 A.2d 287, 290-94 (2001) (Castille, J., joined by Newman, J., concurring) (discussing interrelationship of PCRA and Pennsylvania habeas corpus statute, 42 Pa.C.S. § 6501); see also Commonwealth v. Haag, 570 Pa. 289, 809 A.2d 271, 289-90 (2002) (Castille, J. concurring); Winklespecht v. Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole, 571 Pa. 685, 813 A.2d 688, 692-93 (2002) (Castille, J., joined by Newman, J., concurring). The Majority has explained why the Dissent’s musings in this regard fail, i.e., the issue is raised sua sponte by the Dissent, and thus the question is not before us and we lack adversarial presentations.1 Although the Dissent concedes that the issue is its own, it suggests that the Court *363somehow is to blame for appellant failing to raise the particular theory, since the Court supposedly “has signaled continuously and unremittingly its unwillingness to consider such arguments.” Dissenting Op. at 377, 943 A.2d at 278.
The Dissent’s opinion of this Court’s supposed “unwillingness” to consider issues in this area is but the last of its criticisms of our precedent. The Dissent begins by questioning the correctness of this Court’s holding that the PCRA time-bar is “jurisdictional.”2 More intemperately, the Dissent proceeds to assert that the Court “has felt compelled to tolerate constitutional violation upon constitutional violation, sacrificing fundamental rights at the altar of finality.” Dissenting Op. at 367, 943 A.2d at 272. The Dissent goes on to criticize what it calls “our increasingly narrow reading of the time constraints under the PCRA” which, it says, has “painted us into a corner.” Id. at 369, 943 A.2d at 273. In my view, the Dissent’s criticisms of the Court’s jurisprudence in this area, and by extension its criticism of the Majority’s analysis here, are unwarranted.
The PCRA time-bar was enacted following the beginning of my tenure on the Court since 1994, and so I have participated in, and even authored, some of the decisions that are the subject of the Dissent’s concern. Those decisions primarily posed questions of statutory construction, but with an eye also *364to the complexities of review where some issues do not fit so neatly into statutory categories. As Justice Saylor’s very modest and careful Majority Opinion in this case demonstrates, the Court’s time-bar decisions are not the absolutes the Dissent suggests they are, much less are the cases a product of ill motivation or a predetermination to advance “narrow construction,” whatever that might be. Furthermore, Justice Saylor went to quite some length in his comprehensive Dissenting Opinion in Commonwealth v. Bennett, 593 Pa. 382, 930 A.2d 1264 (2007) to describe the complexities and balancing that in fact have occurred historically as this Court has considered the PCRA time-bar.3 The point is, this Court had, and has, a statute to construe, we have done so in good faith, and decisions were rendered, at times over plausible counter-constructions, and at times over not-so-plausible viewpoints grounded in policy differences.
A proper understanding and appreciation of the PCRA requires consideration of context. With respect to the 1995 PCRA amendments, it is worth noting that there is nothing unconstitutional, or even unwise, about the General Assembly’s concern with finality. Like various pieces of legislation, the 1995 amendments were a response to existing abuses. Not coincidentally, the federal habeas statute was amended around the same time, and Congress likewise adopted a time-bar as well as other restrictions, similar to those found in the PCRA, designed to curb abuses and to bring finality to criminal cases. Prior to the PCRA amendments which included the one-year time-bar, Pennsylvania capital defendants tended to sit on their collateral review rights, except in the rare instance where the Governor signed a death warrant.4 *365Meanwhile, non-capital defendants were free to file for collateral review early and often, and many abused the indulgence. Indeed, it was not uncommon to see an appeal involving a sixth or seventh collateral attack, which required an absurd waste of resources. The abuse was so rampant in serial petition cases that this Court, well in advance of the legislative reaction, itself adopted a significant, non-statutory restriction upon the prospect for post-conviction relief. Thus, in Commonwealth v. Lawson, 519 Pa. 504, 549 A.2d 107, 112 (1988), the Court unanimously declared that, “[a] repetitive or serial [post-conviction] petition may be entertained only for the purpose of avoiding a demonstrated miscarriage of justice, which no civilized society can tolerate.” Finality in criminal cases does properly trump other considerations, in certain circumstances. By the same token, rights, including constitutional rights, may be waived; there is nothing inherently wrong in procedural regulation of the exercise of rights. Some may believe that criminal cases are different and convictions should never be deemed final; but the citizens, through their duly elected representatives, are not obliged to share that view.
More fundamentally, in understanding the PCRA, one must remember the interplay of traditional habeas corpus and Pennsylvania statutes governing post-conviction review. At least in the context of being employed as a vehicle to challenge a criminal conviction, the historical writ was not such a “great” thing for Pennsylvania criminal defendants. Unlike a person who had yet to be tried, a convicted criminal obviously was well aware of the cause of his detention. Common law habeas corpus afforded convicted criminals very little prospect of relief until the sudden criminal procedure revolution engineered by the Earl Warren Supreme Court in the early 1960s. In the wake of those federal decisions, this Court reworked and expanded the scope of the historical writ as a matter of defensive necessity, i.e., to accommodate the flood of petitions *366generated by brand new (and often retroactive) federal imperatives in criminal procedure. Justice (later Chief Justice) Samuel J. Roberts of this Court described the transition as it was occurring, in his thorough and scholarly opinion in Commonwealth ex rel. Stevens v. Myers, 419 Pa. 1, 213 A.2d 613 (1965):
In earlier times petitions for writs of habeas corpus were a far greater rarity than today, at least in Pennsylvania. Today’s frequent resort to the writ can be laid to the burgeoning use of the writ as a means of attacking criminal convictions collaterally. This phenomenal development of the writ as an instrument of postconviction litigation was not foreseen when the common law deemed the writ competent to test only sentences under which the petitioner was then serving.FN13
*367Myers, 213 A.2d at 619-20 (emphasis added) (some citations and footnotes omitted).
The General Assembly responded fairly promptly to the need for a new “state postconviction avenue,” adopting the Post Conviction Hearing Act (“PCHA”) in 1966. As this Court’s own contemporaneous authority demonstrates, the legislative contribution was not designed to restrict or eliminate that which had been afforded to convicted prisoners under common law habeas coipus; rather, the statute addressed the necessity for a new review paradigm in response to new and literally unprecedented federal commands in matters affecting criminal procedure, many of which were deemed retroactive, thus unsettling final convictions. A proper historical understanding, then, requires recognition that the PCHA, and now the PCRA, is remarkable not in how it restricts convicted criminals, but in the broad avenue of collateral attack it accommodates and permits. Given this history, there is nothing at all improper in the General Assembly attempting to normalize, regularize, and expedite review. Even with the time-bar, statutory post-conviction review in this Commonwealth is expansive, not cramped or unduly restrictive. The statute need not apologize for itself; and we need not construe it to mean something other than it says to accommodate a lachrymose outlier situation. This is so, despite the intemperate and unfortunate charges leveled by the Dissent against this Court’s jurisprudence.

. I have addressed elsewhere the importance of adversarial presentations to the making of sound jurisprudence. See Coady, 770 A.2d at 294 *363(Castille, J., concurring) (“I do not indulge the conceit that, without adversarial presentations, it is possible to discern any and all arguments that may be made against the availability of state habeas corpus review. There may very well be more to be said on the matter. I would not foreclose that option, but would await an actual case or controversy, with adversarial presentations, to definitively resolve the question.”) (footnote omitted).

. The time-bar is found in a section of the PCRA entitled, “Jurisdiction and proceedings.” The provision is written in mandatory terms (“Any petition ... shall be filed within one year of the date the judgment becomes final ...”), and it includes a finite number of cognizable exceptions to the mandate (“... unless the petition alleges and the petitioner proves...,”). 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1). There is no basis in the text for the notion that the statute contemplates judicial improvisation of other exceptions — such as the “equitable tolling” doctrine espoused in federal jurisprudence which makes a mockery of the federal limitations period. In any event, this Court’s construction apparently has satisfied the General Assembly, which has not amended the provision.

. Unfortunately, the Bennett Majority was deaf to that history. Bennett’s failure even to attempt to respond was something I viewed as a tacit concession that the Dissent's reasoning was unanswerable. I continue to believe that Bennett was wrongly decided. If the Court were to embark upon the wholesale reconsideration of existing time-bar decisions that the Dissent appears to prefer, I would begin with Bennett. In any event, the very existence of Bennett impeaches the Dissent's characterization of this Court's caselaw.

. The Governor's failure to timely sign death warrants led to litigation, see Morganelli v. Casey, 163 Pa.Cmwlth. 538, 641 A.2d 674 (1994) *365(mandamus issued directing Governor to issue death warrant), and eventually to passage of the warrant-signing statute, which ensured that warrants would be timely issued, see 61 Pa.C.S. § 3002.

. "The writ [the narrow common law writ of habeas corpus which the states incorporated into their jurisprudence] tested only the jurisdiction of the authority imposing restraint, and the concept of jurisdiction for this purpose was extremely limited.” (Footnote omitted.) Reitz, "Federal Habeas Corpus: Postconviction Remedy for State Prisoners,” 108 U.Pa.L.Rev. 461, 465-466 (1960).
That the scope of the writ has developed greatly with the exigencies of the time as a postconviction remedy seems so undeniable that extensive citation and comparison of cases might now well seem a needless exercise. There is no other comprehensive method of collateral attack in Pennsylvania. Thus this growth of the writ is not surprising or unwarranted in view of our continuing efforts to provide a full hearing for claims of federal constitutional violations and in the face of the present urgent necessity for a state postconviction avenue which will afford an adequate corrective process for hearing and determining alleged violations of federal constitutional guarantees. See, e. g., Case v. State of Nebraska, 381 U.S. 336, 85 S.Ct. 1486, 14 L.Ed.2d 422 (1965); Reitz, Federal Habeas Corpus: Postconviction Remedy for State Prisoners, 108 U.Pa.L.Rev. 461, 465-66, 469-70 (1960); Meador, Accommodating State Criminal Procedure and Federal Postconviction Review, 50 A.B.A.J. 928, 929-30 (1964).