Court Opinion

ID: 9760870
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:20:56.082834+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:18.170294
License: Public Domain

BROSKY, Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the majority’s determination of trial counsel’s ineffectiveness, but write to address the manner in which the claim was preserved for our review. I also join in the Concurring Opinion by Judge Beck.
As noted in footnote one of the majority opinion, trial counsel was replaced at the post-trial motions stage of the proceedings below and new counsel filed post-trial motions in arrest of judgment and for a new trial. Included in the motion for a new trial was a claim that trial counsel was incompetent. It was, of course, necessary for new counsel to raise this claim in the post-trial motions since a claim of ineffectiveness of prior counsel is not preserved unless it is raised at the earliest stage, in the proceedings at which counsel whose effectiveness is being challenged no longer represents the defendant. Commonwealth v. Hubbard, 472 Pa. 259, 372 A.2d 687 (1977).
However, new counsel subsequently filed a motion in which he requested that the argument on post-trial motions be converted to a post-conviction hearing.1 The court below then consolidated the argument on the post-trial motions with what it terms a PCHA hearing in the context of which the claim of ineffectiveness of counsel was heard.
*56After the hearing, the lower court, on September 16, 1980, entered an order in which it denied the motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment and further denied what it termed appellant’s PCHA application. On November 3, 1980, appellant was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not less than three nor more than six years.
On this appeal from the judgment of sentence, we then, theoretically, could refuse to consider the ineffectiveness claim on the basis that it was the subject of a prior final order (that part of the court’s order of September 16 denying the PCHA application) from which appellant has not appealed. See, Petition of Baily, 365 Pa. 613, 76 A.2d 645 (1980).
However, I believe the better and more just course is, as we have here, to consider the substance of the proceedings below rather than their form. I find that, in substance, what occurred was no more than the raising of the ineffectiveness claim in a post-trial motion for a new trial; an evidentiary hearing pursuant to that claim; and a denial of the claim by the court below.
I think that the key point is that the claim was raised in appellant’s post-trial motions. The fact that it was subsequently termed a PCHA claim due to an erroneous impression on the part of new counsel and the lower court that such was necessary because the claim was one of ineffectiveness of counsel should not serve to invalidate an otherwise proper procedure. Furthermore, the court below did treat the claim on its merits despite the fact that an actual PCHA claim should have been dismissed under § 9543(2) since appellant had not yet been sentenced. Therefore, I conclude that when the lower court stated that it was refusing appellant’s PCHA application, it was, in effect, simply specifically denying one of appellant’s grounds for a new trial. Thus, on appeal from the judgment of sentence it is proper to consider the ineffective assistance of counsel claim.

. Counsel apparently believed either that a claim of ineffectiveness of counsel must be raised in a Post Conviction Hearing Act (PCHA) proceeding, see 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9541 et seq., or that an evidentiary hearing on the claim could not be part of the post-trial motions proceedings, but had to take place in the context of a post-conviction hearing. Neither of these propositions is true.
A claim of ineffectiveness of counsel can certainly be raised in post-trial motions and there is no reason why the post-trial court cannot conduct an evidentiary hearing, if necessary, on such a claim. Furthermore, a PCHA proceeding is not proper before judgment of *56sentence. One is not eligible for relief under the Act unless he is, inter alia, “incarcerated ... under a sentence of ... imprisonment ...” 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9543(2); see 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9542.