Court Opinion

ID: 9641488
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:33:02.926182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:37.789178
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
I join in Mr. Justice Manderino’s dissenting opinion. Additionally I dissent from the majority’s disposition of appellant’s claim that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to request recusal of the trial judge. On the basis of the trial judge’s post-trial statement in his opinion that he did not hear appellant say “I have to plead guilty,” the majority further concludes that even if such a request would have been meritorious, trial counsel had some other reasonable basis for not raising it. This analysis is misdirected. In Commonwealth ex rel. Washington v. Maroney, 427 Pa. 599, 235 A.2d 349 (1967), and in all ineffectiveness cases since then, this Court has held that ineffectiveness claims should not be reviewed from “hindsight.” Rather, the proper analysis is whether trial counsel had some reasonable basis for taking the action he did at the time his decision was made. At the time appellant made his potentially prejudicial remark, trial counsel did not know, and could not be expected to know, that the trial judge did not hear it. Thus, trial counsel’s decision not to request recusal could not be based on the assumption that the trial court was unaware of appellant’s comment. In these circumstances, there is no reasonable basis to justify trial counsel’s decision not to request recusal.
MANDERINO, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.