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581 Pa. 57

863 A.2d 505

Commonwealth v. Williams

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided December 22, 2004

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 2004-12-22

Relies on Mills v. Maryland · Beard Secretary Pennsylvania Department of Corrections et al. v. Banks · Youngberg v. United States

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2004-12-22

How this case has been cited

Cited by 58 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Commonwealth v. Wright (2008), Williams v. Pennsylvania (2016)

2 federal appellate · 54 state decisions

310200420102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Justice BAER

¶1concurring.

¶2I write separately only to note my view that jury instructions, such'as those given here, which mirror the language of Section 9711(c)(l)(iv) of the Pennsylvania Death Penalty Statute, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(c)(l)(iv), impermissibly infer a requirement that any mitigating circumstance must be found unanimously by the jury in violation of Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. 367, 108 S.Ct. 1860, 100 L.Ed.2d 384 (1988).1

¶3*89Nevertheless, I join the majority opinion in all respects for several reasons. First, the majority properly disposes of the assertion on a waiver theory, noting that such claim was previously litigated on direct appeal. Second, the majority notes the United States Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Beard v. Banks, No. 02-1608, 542 U.S. 406, 124 S.Ct. 2504, 159 L.Ed.2d 494 (2004), makes it clear that Millsdoes not apply retroactively to cases, such as this, that were decided prior to its issuance.2 Finally, the majority notes that, on direct appeal, this Court, in upholding the instruction at issue, relied on our decision in Commonwealth v. Frey, 520 Pa. 338, 554 A.2d 27, 31 (1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1038, 110 S.Ct. 1500, 108 L.Ed.2d 635 (1990), holding that the language of the death penalty statute does not “state or infer a requirement that any given mitigating circumstance must be unanimously recognized before it can be weighed against aggravating circumstances in reaching a verdict.” Thus, based upon principles of stare decisis, I am bound to follow our prior precedent in this regard.

¶4. Section 9711 (c)( 1 )(iv) provides:

[T]he verdict must be a sentence of death if the jury unanimously finds at least one aggravating circumstance specified in subsection (d) and no mitigating circumstance or if the jury unanimously finds one or more aggravating circumstances which outweigh any mitigating *89circumstances. The verdict must be a sentence of life imprisonment in all other cases

¶5. Appellant's trial occurred in 1986, two years prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Mills.

Justice NIGRO

¶6dissenting.

¶7I dissent, as I agree with Justice Saylor that Appellant has demonstrated that his trial-counsel was ineffective for failing to adequately investigate and present evidence of mitigation, including evidence of Appellant’s mental health and abusive childhood, at his penalty phase hearing. Appellant, however, has presented only a boilerplate allegation that appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise trial counsel’s ineffectiveness in this regard. Thus, as the majority notes, Appellant has not preserved an ineffectiveness claim arising from appellate counsel’s deficient performance and such a claim is the only one on which relief may be granted. See Op. at 68-70, 863 A.2d at 512. Given these circumstances, I would, consistent with this Court’s recent decision in Commonwealth *90v. McGill, 574 Pa. 574, 832 A.2d 1014 (2003), remand the matter to provide Appellant with the opportunity to develop his claim as it relates to appellate counsel’s performance.

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