PCRA Review
Challenging a conviction? Here’s how you can go about it.
What is the PCRA?
The PCRA, Pennsylvania’s Post-Conviction Relief act, allows individuals who are serving a sentence to challenge their conviction – on certain constitutional and statutory grounds.
Here are the requirements and limitations you need to comply with so you can preserve your rights.
Your Right to Review
Ineffective trial or appellate counsel
- If your trial or appellate counsel were ineffective, you must make that claim within a year.
- Ineffective assistance of counsel IS NOT a grounds for the direct appeal following conviction, which means it is sometimes mistakenly left out of the first PCRA.
- If that happens, the claim for ineffective assistance of trial (or appellate) counsel is gone forever.
Newly Discovered Evidence
- If there is newly discovered evidence, a PCRA must be filed within a year of that discovery, even if the discovery takes place years (or decades) after the conviction.
- Newly discovered evidence must satisfy the requirement that it could not have been discovered earlier through the exercise of due diligence.
Brady Violation
- A Brady violation occurs where important evidence was withheld from the criminal defendant before trial.
- When suppression of meaningful evidence occurs, the Petitioner has grounds to request a new trial.
- Thanks to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s “open filed policy,” it is easier to review police and prosecutor files to find possible Brady material.
Limitations
Online Review Manipulation
- You cannot bring a claim if more than a year has passed since you learned of newly discovered evidence.
- You cannot bring a claim where the newly discovered evidence is merely more support for a fact that was already known or could have been known through the exercise of due diligence.
Copyright and Intellectual Property
- For evidence to be “newly discovered,” it must be something that could not have been discovered earlier through the exercise of due diligence. The courts recognize that a person’s ability to exercise due diligence is severely limited by being in prison.
- You cannot re-litigate issues that were already addressed in a previous legal proceeding, such as trial or prior PCRA.
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