Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently April 2024
23 state decisions
Key passage — most relied on by later courts
“(b) Time for filing petition.— (1) Any petition under this subchap-ter, including a second or subsequent petition, shall be filed within one year of the date the judgment becomes final, unless the petition alleges and the petitioner proves that: (i) the failure to raise the claim previously was the result of interference by government officials with the presentation of the claim in violation of the Constitution or laws of this Commonwealth or the Constitution or laws of the United States; (ii) the facts upon which the claim is predicated were unknown to the petitioner and could not have been ascertained by the exercise of due diligence; or (iii) the right asserted is a constitutional right that was recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States or the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania after the time period provided in this section and has been held by that court to apply retroactively. (2) Any petition invoking an exception provided in paragraph (1) shall be filed within 60 days of the date the claim could have been presented.”
¶2I join the Majority Opinion in its entirety, writing only in response to Mr. Justice Baer’s Concurring Opinion, as follows.
¶3The concurrence posits a factual circumstance, not present here, under which the concurrence believes it would be appropriate to build upon and expand this Court’s decision in Commonwealth v. Bennett, 593 Pa. 382, 930 A.2d 1264 (2007), construing the “unknown facts” exception to the PCRA’s1 time-bar. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(h) (providing exception to PCRA’s one-year time bar when “the facts upon which the claim is predicated were unknown to the petitioner and could not have been ascertained by the exercise of due diligence”). Bennettwas a 4-3 decision; and I continue to believe that the dissenting views in that case, which I joined — and particularly the expression of Mr. Justice Saylor, which was grounded in the plain meaning of the word “claim”— were far more persuasive than the majority view, which I continue to view as ends-driven and implausible. Bennetthas caused enough mischief; indeed, misper-ception of Bennett’s import occasioned the necessity for review and correction here. The continuing vitality of Bennettis not before the Court, and I particularly caution the courts below that nothing in the Court’s decision today should be read as an endorsement or reaffirmation of Bennett, much less an invitation to expand upon that decision. For my own part, I believe that any further consideration of Bennett-derived constructions of the PCRA’s time-bar, such as the exception imagined by the concurrence, should be joined with an express reconsideration of Bennettitself, which would afford an opportunity to eradicate the underlying problems that case has generated.2
¶5. I expressed a similar viewpoint in Commonwealth v. Brown, 596 Pa. 354, 943 A.2d 264, 269-70 & n. 3 (2008) (Castille, C.J., concur*988ring) ("I continue to believe that Bennettwas wrongly decided. If the Court were to embark upon the wholesale reconsideration of existing time-bar decisions ... I would begin with Bennett..”)
