Court Opinion

ID: 9755395
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:37:04.464903+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:06.899599
License: Public Domain

*155Chief Justice CASTILLE

(concurring).

I join the Majority Opinion, subject to some modest points of emphasis noted below.
First, the Majority correctly notes that recent U.S. Supreme Court cases such as Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000) and Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 123 S.Ct. 2527, 156 L.Ed.2d 471 (2003) merely explicate, and do not themselves “establish” the “constitutional norms” governing the conduct of capital counsel in cases which were tried years, even decades, before those cases were decided. Majority Op. at 303. As this Court explained in Commonwealth v. Bond, 572 Pa. 588, 819 A.2d 33, 42 (2002), cases issued upon federal habeas corpus review of state convictions under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) — such as Williams, Wiggins, and Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374, 125 S.Ct. 2456, 162 L.Ed.2d 360 (2005) — do not establish constitutional standards governing the performance of counsel. Instead, the Court was applying clearly established law from Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), through the limiting guise of the deferential standard of review dictated by AEDPA.1 AEDPA permits federal courts to grant state prisoners relief on federal constitutional claims that were rejected on the merits in state court only if the state court determination was contrary to, or involved an objectively unreasonable application of, then-existing, clearly established decisional law from the U.S. Supreme Court. 28 U.S.C. *156§ 2254(d)(1); Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 520-21, 123 S.Ct. 2527. Williams and Wiggins may be useful to the extent they repeat existing, governing norms established in Strickland, and they stand as applications of those norms. But, decisions under AEDPA do not establish any new or different constitutional law governing Sixth Amendment claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. I agree with Mr. Justice Eakin that no lawyer can be faulted for failing to abide by a rule “established” by a later case decision, much less a case decision rendered on federal collateral review.2
I join the Majority’s substantive analysis of the penalty phase claim because the salient principles necessary to decide this matter are found in Strickland itself, and that case existed when counsel acted.
Second, although I join the Majority’s analysis and disposition of appellant’s first guilt phase claim, relating to the removal of his initial trial counsel, left to my own devices, I would reject as irrelevant appellant’s reliance upon cases such as Yohn v. Love, 76 F.3d 508 (3d Cir.1996) and Appel v. Horn, 250 F.3d 203 (3d Cir.2001). These cases are non-binding expressions from lower federal court panels, and they did not exist in 1985, when appellant’s trial counsel defaulted the claim concerning the pre-trial proceeding and setting of the trial date. The underlying “arguable merit” of appellant’s cognizable ineffective assistance claim cannot be measured by later decisions which were non-existent when counsel acted in 1985.3
Third, I write to appellant’s ineffectiveness claim deriving from the admission of evidence at trial concerning his ownership and theft of handguns — an evidentiary issue appellant litigated on direct appeal. The Majority does not hold the claim to be barred under the PCRA’s previous litigation *157provision, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9543(a)(3), because it sounds in ineffective assistance, and the Majority thereby dutifully implements the interpretation of the PCRA’s previous litigation provision which prevailed in Commonwealth v. Collins, 585 Pa. 45, 888 A.2d 564 (2005).4 I join the Majority’s ultimate resolution of this claim because, as the Majority notes, this Court rendered an alternative holding, on direct appeal, that admission of the evidence was harmless. As a practical matter, that finding precludes appellant from proving Strickland prejudice. Accord Commonwealth v. Collins, 888 A.2d at 574-75; Commonwealth v. Gribble, 580 Pa. 647, 863 A.2d 455, 462 (2004). I would add that appellant has not shown, through citation to binding federal authority extant at the relevant time, that the new federal due process gloss he places upon the state evidentiary claim prior counsel litigated is meritorious. Finally, with respect to the tension the Majority perceives in our decisional law on the generic, underlying evidentiary issue involving prior crimes, I note that any such tension arose after the trial in this matter and therefore is of no avail to appellant, whose present claim sounds in counsel ineffectiveness.
Subject to the above, I join the Majority Opinion.

. Strickland, did establish a governing Sixth Amendment standard, and it was a case arising on habeas corpus review of a state court conviction. However, Strickland was decided long before AEDPA was adopted and imposed an overdue, salutary restriction upon federal courts (at all levels) overturning decisions by state courts which reasonably interpreted governing High Court precedent. Strickland also was decided before the High Court recognized the impropriety of applying or innovating new rules upon habeas review of state convictions. See Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U.S. 383, 389, 114 S.Ct. 948, 127 L.Ed.2d 236 (1994); Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 306, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989) (plurality opinion). (Though a plurality, Teague has since repeatedly been embraced by the full Court. E.g., Butler v. McKellar, 494 U.S. 407, 415, 110 S.Ct. 1212, 108 L.Ed.2d 347 (1990); Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 313, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989)).

. Respectfully, I do not join footnote 6 of the Majority Opinion.

. For similar reasons, with respect to appellant's claims arising from the timing of trial counsel’s appointment and fee limitations imposed on the defense, although I again join the Majority, I would stress that appellant's reliance upon a line of cases arising from Florida concerning fee limitations, all decided after the trial in this matter, is inapposite to a contemporaneous assessment. Counsel could not have cited those cases in 1985 in support of an objection to the limitations.

. In Collins, both this author (joined by Mr. Justice Eakin) and Mr. Justice Saylor offered interpretations of the previous litigation bar which would have left more teeth in the statutory default where claims of ineffective assistance are at issue. See 888 A.2d at 585-86 (Castille, J., joined by Eakin, J., concurring and dissenting) (noting, inter alia, that many claims of ineffectiveness will fail for reasons involving issue preclusion, depending upon the basis for the resolution on direct appeal) id. at 584-85 (Saylor, J., concurring) (noting, inter alia, that the previous litigation bar should apply to claims of ineffective assistance “where the underlying claim has been fully and fairly litigated and deemed meritless, and a petitioner seeks nothing more on post-conviction review than a different and more favorable resolution of precisely the same claim that was previously rejected on direct appeal, albeit via an ineffectiveness overlay.”).