Court Opinion

ID: 9635345
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:47:58.036319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:24.971554
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring and dissenting:
I join in the majority’s opinion as to appellants Smith and Bradley. However, I disagree with the majority’s holding that appellant Garvin may not prevail on his claim that counsel was ineffective because he did not prove that counsel’s failure to request the minimum number of peremptory challenges to which he was entitled under Rule 1126 prejudiced him at trial. At 208.
The result of the majority’s holding is that the right to effective assistance of counsel does not apply during voir dire proceedings, for it can never be proved that if the composition of the jury had been different, the result at *219trial would have been different. In appraising counsel’s conduct during voir dire, I should therefore inquire whether Garvin was prejudiced in the context of the jury selection process, not in the context of what happened afterwards in the trial.
As the majority acknowledges, each of appellants was entitled to a minimum of three peremptory challenges under Rule 1126(b)(1). At 200. At the post-trial hearing, Garvin’s trial counsel testified that she was dissatisfied with the composition of the jury, and that if she had known that Garvin had a right to a minimum of three peremptory challenges, she would have asked for and would have used the additional challenge. N.T. 6-8. I believe that this testimony was sufficient to show that Garvin was prejudiced in the context of the jury selection process: there could be no reasonable basis for counsel’s confessed ignorance of the amendments to Rule 1126, and but for her ignorance, she would have sought to improve (from Garvin’s point of view) the composition of the jury by exercising the additional peremptory challenge to which Garvin was entitled under Rule 1126(b)(1).
I therefore believe that the judgment of sentence against Garvin should be vacated and as to him, the case should be remanded for a new trial. Otherwise I concur in the majority’s order.