Court Opinion

ID: 9729806
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:49:18.863011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:01.292011
License: Public Domain

*541POMEROY, Justice,
concurring.
In Commonwealth v. Rice, 456 Pa. 90, 93, 318 A.2d 705, 707 (1974), our Court held that “[cjounsel cannot be faulted for failing to assert a non-existent right.” Since the basis for Humphrey’s instant claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel is the latter’s failure to raise at trial the legal principle announced in Commonwealth v. Haideman, 449 Pa. 367, 296 A.2d 765 (1972), a case not decided until several months after trial, it would ordinarily follow that this Court should find that the foregone claim lacked “arguable merit” at the time of trial, Commonwealth v. Hubbard, 472 Pa. 259,- 372 A.2d 687, 696 (1977), thus dispensing with the need for inquiry into the reason counsel did not advance the contention. Id.
The factor which for me dictates a different result here, however, is that nine months prior to trial in the case at bar, our Court was called upon to decide the identical legal question which was decided in Haideman, supra, and divided evenly on the issue. Commonwealth v. Haideman, 284 A.2d 757 (1971) (“Haideman I”). I am therefore enabled to conclude that, absent adequate explanation to the contrary, a lawyer in the situation of trial counsel in this case should raise the issue, inasmuch as it possesses at least “arguable merit.” (Emphasis added.) I cannot accept, however, the additional rationale advanced by the majority that Humphrey’s trial lawyer must be held to have been aware of this Court’s order granting a petition for reargument in Haideman I entered some five months prior to trial in this case.
For purposes of the concept of effective counsel, a derivative of the now settled holding that the right to counsel in a criminal trial is constitutionally required by the Fourteenth Amendment, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), we must expect the bar to keep fully abreast of developments in the law, whether those developments be decisional, statutory, or *542rule of court. While ideally the well-prepared lawyer will make inquiry to the prothonotary of this Court as to whether reargument of another case important to him has been sought, I think it is asking too much to charge him with constructive notice of the filing and disposition of such a petition, and to hold him constitutionally ineffective for not making an argument based on the supposition that the reargument effort will be successful. Furthermore, holdings such as today’s will, in my judgment, only serve to make more difficult and complex than they now are the standards for passing judgment on effective trial advocacy. Thus, while I am convinced the result the Court reaches is correct, I do not join in the opinion.