Court Opinion

ID: 9649643
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:04:20.744239+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:13.293380
License: Public Domain

SAYLOR, Justice,
dissenting.
In the present case, the PCRA court dismissed Appellant’s post-conviction claims without a hearing in a manner substantially similar to the dismissal that was before the Court in Commonwealth v. Williams, 566 Pa. 553, 782 A.2d 517 (2001). In my view, the accounting for Williams offered by the lead opinion here merely represents a restyling of points advanced by Mr. Justice Castille’s concurring opinion from that case, embodying, inter alia, the concept that “this Court should deny review based solely upon deficiencies in post-conviction appellate briefs, although the briefs may themselves manifest ineffective assistance on the part of appellate post-conviction counsel for failing even to invoke the Court’s review.” Williams, 566 Pa. at 567 n. 5, 782 A.2d at 526 n. 5. However, the express intent of Williams’ approach of requiring adherence to the rules governing post-conviction proceedings was to “protect the integrity of the process and the rights of a capital petitioner in the common pleas setting, [and] also to provide the essential predicate for appellate review of the post-conviction proceedings.” Id. at 569, 782 A.2d at 527. By enforcing the rules, including the requirement that post-conviction courts provide reasonably specific pre-dismissal notice of the reasons supporting a summary disposition, such potential ineffectiveness should be exposed early in the process and, where appropriate, corrected by amendatory pleadings in furtherance of the interests identified above. Absent effective and consistently enforced controls, the Court can have little confidence that its dispositions of capital appeals in circumstances *377such as are presented here reflect more than the ineptitude of post-conviction counsel.
Accordingly, as in Williams, I would remand the matter for disposition in accordance with our rules and decisional law as elaborated in that decision.
Chief Justice FLAHERTY joins in this dissenting opinion.