Pennsylvania v. Rosado

In 2012, Appellant Frankie Rosado was accused of sexually abusing his former girlfriend’s teenage daughter, whereupon he was charged with one count each of indecent assault, corruption of minors, and unlawful contact with minor. Appellant, then represented by a public defender, proceeded to trial, whereafter he was convicted of the aforementioned offenses and later sentenced to an aggregate term of 33 to 69 months imprisonment. Appellant hired new counsel to represent him at the post-sentencing and appellate stages of his case. Appellate Counsel filed a postsentence motion raising, as relevant here, a sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim, but the trial court denied relief. Appellate Counsel then filed a notice of appeal to the Superior Court which later summarily affirmed the trial court's judgment. Appellant later filed for post-conviction relief, arguing he received ineffective assistance of counsel. In his application, appellant argued that Appellate Counsel filed a document styled as a “preliminary” concise statement, wherein he raised three issues for appeal, but failed to file a revised concise statement. When the appellate brief was filed, Appellate Counsel abandoned the three issues raised in the preliminary statement and raised three others. In an unpublished memorandum opinion, the Superior Court, while noting the three issues preserved in Appellant’s concise statement, found a sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim to be waived, as it was not included therein. The PCRA court found that Appellate Counsel’s conduct did not amount to ineffectiveness per se, and, accordingly, denied relief. So the issue for the Supreme Court's review was whether filing an appellate brief which abandoned all preserved issues in favor of unpreserved ones constituted ineffective assistance of counsel per se. After careful review, the Court held that it did, and so the Court vacated the Superior Court’s order and remanded this case back to that court for further proceedings. View "Pennsylvania v. Rosado" on Justia Law