Court Opinion

ID: 9751406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:24:27.492855+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:45.179713
License: Public Domain

*38Justice SAYLOR,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent in favor of an evidentiary hearing regarding Appellant’s guilt-phase ineffectiveness claims. Given the extent of the patent ineffectiveness we have seen in a fair number of these cases (including this one relative to the penalty phase at least, see Majority Opinion, at 12-13, 45 A.3d at 1103), I maintain that such claims should be decided on a reasonably developed record.
Finally, I reiterate that “I would disapprove the prosecutorial practice of asking capital sentencing juries to render verdicts in the same cold deliberate manner as the victim was killed, since under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the obligation of jurors is to follow the law, not the lawless mindset of the killer.” Commonwealth v. Freeman, 573 Pa. 532, 587, 827 A.2d 385, 418 (2003) (Saylor, J., concurring and dissenting) (citing Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782, 797-98, 121 S.Ct. 1910, 1920-21, 150 L.Ed.2d 9 (2001), and Commonwealth v. King, 554 Pa. 331, 359-60, 721 A.2d 763, 777 (1998)).