Court Opinion

ID: 9637939
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:27:11.816363+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:28.517253
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice
(dissenting).
Today the Court uses the reasoning of the opinion announcing the judgment of the Court in Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 464 Pa. 117, 346 A.2d 48 (1975),1 [1975] to reject appellant’s first claim, and then repudiates that reasoning to reject appellant’s second claim. Because I believe that the law should remain constant at least within the samé opinion, I must dissent.
The majority finds that appellant has waived the claim that his confession should have been suppressed as the product of unnecessary delay between arrest and prelimi*470nary arraignment2 by failing to raise it at his pretrial suppression hearing.3 This waiver was based on language in the opinion announcing the judgment of the Court in Commonwealth v. Mitchell, supra.
The theory of Mitchell was that defense counsel should have anticipated our decision in Commonwealth v. Futch, 447 Pa. 389, 290 A.2d 417 (1972), and that failure so to anticipate waived the claim.
“Defense counsel should have been aware that our rules of procedure required a prompt arraignment without an unnecessary delay. If it was ascertained that this direction had been ignored and his client prejudiced thereby, the fact that the penalty for such a violation had not been announced fails to provide an excuse for failing to raise the objection.”
Commonwealth v. Mitchell, 464 Pa. 117, 346 A.2d 48 (1975). I cannot agree that a failure to object to a theretofore remediless violation of a procedural rule results in a waiver for all time of all rights under the rule.4 What I consider to be the correct analysis was adopted by the Court in Commonwealth v. Wayman, 454 Pa. 79, 309 A.2d 784 (1973).5 I still do not understand how a *471defendant can waive the right to seek a remedy that does not yet exist in the law. I certainly do not understand how such a waiver can be knowing and intelligent. I must, therefore, dissent from the majority opinion which relies on Mitchell to state that appellant has waived 6 his Futch claim.
As stated above, the majority finds a waiver of a defendant’s rights in his counsel’s failure to raise an objection to the violation of a rule of procedure which was at that time without remedy. If the majority believed its own reasoning, it would be forced to conclude that the failure to raise an objection which counsel, because of his predictive ability, “knows” to be of crucial importance to his client is ineffective assistance of counsel. See Commonwealth ex rel. Washington v. Maroney, 427 Pa. 599, 235 A.2d 349 (1967).
In Washington, we said:
“We cannot emphasize strongly enough, however, that our inquiry ceases and counsel’s assistance is deemed constitutionally effective once we are able to conclude that the particular course chosen by counsel had some reasonable basis designed to effectuate his client’s interests. The test is not whether other alternatives were more reasonable, employing a hindsight evaluation of the record.”
427 Pa. 599, 604, 235 A.2d 349, 352 (1967) (emphasis in original).
*472In the instant case counsel either predicted our decision in Futch and deliberately failed to raise the claim at the pretrial suppression hearing, or counsel did not predict Futch and out of ignorance of its importance, failed to raise the claim. But ignorance of the “law” does not excuse an attorney’s failure effectively to represent his client. Because appellant clearly had a good Futch claim, there can be no reasonable basis for counsel’s failure to raise it at the suppression hearing.
Although the above result would appear to be compelled by the reasoning in Mitchell, it is not the result the majority reaches here. On the contrary, the majority finds that counsel was not ineffective in failing to raise the Futch claim because such a claim was not likely to succeed.7 The majority relies on counsel’s ability to predict the Futch result to find that counsel waived the defendant’s Futch claim, yet find that the claim would not have succeeded, apparently because this Court could not have predicated Futch. This result confounds both logic and law.
This situation could rationally be resolved without torturing logic or reality. Defense counsel cannot be expected to predict the decisions of this Court. As a result, the failure to assert such a remediless claim at the time cannot operate as a waiver of the defendant’s rights under that claim when a remedy is developed. Nor is the failure to present such a claim ineffective assistance of counsel. Thus, the claim is not waived and is preserved for direct appeal.
*473A Futch claim may be presented on direct appeal if not validly waived. Such a claim may not be presented on a PCHA petition because it does not fall within any of the enumerated bases for relief.8 Because the failure to present the claim was not ineffective assistance of counsel, that claim is not available on PCHA either.
I believe that this resolution conforms with both law and reality. It is distressing that the majority finds it *474necessary to torture both to achieve the same end. Moreover, because the majority, in order to find a waiver, chooses to believe that counsel should have predicted Futch, one is compelled to conclude in reliance on that belief that the failure to present the claim is ineffective assistance of counsel. Therefore, because he was ineffectively assisted at trial and on appeal, appellant should, according to the reasoning in Mitchell, be accorded relief on his PCHA petition.
It is ironic that the reasoning used by the majority to find waiver of appellant’s Futch claim should permit him to raise it on PCHA as the basis for a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.

. I dissented in Mitchell. Use of the case here is not meant to indicate a change in position.

. See Commonwealth v. Futch, 447 Pa. 389, 290 A.2d 417 (1972); Pa.R.Crim.P. 118 (now 130).

. Appellant’s pretrial suppression hearing, trial and direct appeal to this Court all took place prior to our decision in Futch.

. If such a failure to object does operate as a waiver, conscientious and cautious defense counsel will present every conceivable objection at every conceivable opportunity in an effort best to preserve for his client any rights that may be announced in the future. Such a result serves neither the cause of justice nor the need for judicial economy.

. Wayman was based on the awareness that defense counsel cannot be expected to anticipate decisions of this Court:
“[Ijt would be manifestly unfair to hold appellant to a waiver when this waiver is alleged to have occurred at a time when neither the defendant nor his attorney had any way of knowing that there existed a right to be waived.”
Commonwealth v. Wayman, 454 Pa. 79, 81 n. 1, 309 A.2d 781, 786 n. 1 (1973), quoting Commonwealth v. Simon, 446 Pa. 215, 218, 285 A.2d 861, 862 (1971), and Commonwealth v. Cheeks, 429 Pa. 89, 95, 239 A.2d 793, 796 (1968).

. What is most distressing about the result in Mitchell is that it supports the legal fiction of waiver with an untenable fiction concerning the predictive abilities of the criminal defense bar. Waiver is found, inter alia, because counsel should have presented the claim to the trial court for proper factfinding. Counsel cannot reasonably be expected to present every conceivable and speculative basis for objection to the trial court on the ground that some time in the future some remedy may be found to exist for violation of a right. Competent counsel can only be reasonably expected to select for presentation the objections which, based on present law, have the best, realistic chance of success. Expecting counsel to present a Futch claim before Futch was decided requires him to foresee the future. If he fails to do so his client has a waived imposed on him.

. Prior to Futch this Court heard only one case alleging unnecessary delay in violation of Rule 118. Commonwealth v. Koch, 446 Pa. 469, 288 A.2d 791 (1972). In that case we found that Rule 118 had not been violated, 446 Pa. at 474-76, 288 A.2d at 793-94 and therefore had no occasion to consider a remedy for violation of the rule. The majority assumes that no pre-Futch case could come to Futch’s result, and evaluate appellant’s claim as if Rule 118 did not exist. Neither the assumption nor the evaluation is accurate.

. “To be eligible for relief under this act, a person must prove the following:
(c) That his conviction or sentence resulted from one or more of the following reasons:
(1) The introduction of evidence obtained pursuant to an unlawful arrest;
(2) The introduction of evidence obtained by an unconstitutional search and seizure;
(3) The introduction of a coerced confession into evidence;
(4) The introduction into evidence of a statement obtained in the absence of counsel at a time when representation is constitutionally required;
(5) The infringement of his privilege against self-incrimination under either Federal or State law;
(6) The denial of his constitutional right to representation by competent counsel;
(7) A plea of guilty unlawfully induced;
(8) The unconstitutional suppression of evidence by the State;
(9) The unconstitutional use by the State of perjured testimony;
(10) The observation by State officials of petitioner’s right of appeal;
(11) His being twice placed in jeopardy;
(12) The abridgement in any other way of any right guaranteed by the constitution or laws of this State or the constitution or laws of the United States, including a right that was not recognized as existing at the time of the trial if the constitution requires retrospective application of that right; or
(13) The unavailability at the time of trial of exculpatory evidence that has subsequently become available and that would have affected the outcome of the trial if it had been introduced.”
Post Conviction Hearing Act of January 25, 1966, P.L. (1965) 1580, § 3, 19 P.S. I 1180-3 (Supp.1975) (emphasis added). The right to exclusion of evidence obtained during an unnecessary delay in preliminary arraignment was not “recognized” at the time of appellant’s trial. The Futch rule is based on our supervisory power rather than “the constitution of the United States,” and it can hardly be contended that “the constitution” requires retrospective application “of that right.”