Court Opinion

ID: 9627033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:31:32.08891+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:38.484316
License: Public Domain

Justice NEWMAN
concurring and dissenting.
I join the Concurring and Dissenting Opinion of Mr. Justice Castille. I write separately to emphasize my disagreement with the assertion by the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court, in footnote 3, that Commonwealth v. Pursell, 555 Pa. 233, 724 A.2d 293 (1999), requires this Court to treat Appellant’s claim of ineffective assistance of post conviction counsel as ripe for review, even though presented for the first time in a petition for allowance of appeal. Pursell was an appeal from the dismissal of a timely post conviction petition in a capital case. Although we examined Pursell’s claims of ineffective assistance of PCRA counsel, that review occurred in the context of our mandatory appellate jurisdiction in PCRA capital cases. Mandatory capital PCRA appellate review implicates considerations that simply are not present in a petition for allowance of appeal, in a non-capital PCRA case, where it is within our discretion to accept or decline review. Consequently, I do not believe that our capital PCRA jurisprudence serves as a useful paradigm for resolving this problem within our system of discretionary review.
I agree with Mr. Justice Castille’s position that the allocatur process is not designed for review of claims of ineffective assistance of PCRA counsel raised in a petition for allowance of appeal. This Court does a disservice to the allocatur *542process — the vehicle by which we set policy for the Commonwealth on “special and important” matters — when we entertain claims for which there has been no prior appellate review.