Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Shawn Lamar Burton

Summary

This is a dissenting opinion by Justice Baer of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in Commonwealth v. Burton. The dissent argues that the PCRA’s public-record presumption should apply to incarcerated pro se petitioners and that Burton’s untimely PCRA petition was properly dismissed without an evidentiary hearing.

Holdings

1. The dissent would apply the existing public-record presumption to incarcerated pro se PCRA petitioners and would not create a status-based exception for them.
2. The dissent would hold that Burton failed to establish an exception to the PCRA's one-year time bar because he did not prove that the relevant facts were unknown and could not have been ascertained through due diligence.
3. The dissent would hold that the PCRA court properly dismissed the untimely petition without an evidentiary hearing.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the public-record presumption applicable to the PCRA's newly-discovered-facts exception should be applied to incarcerated pro se PCRA petitioners.
2. Whether Burton established an exception to the PCRA's one-year jurisdictional time bar based on newly discovered facts.
3. Whether the PCRA court properly dismissed Burton's petition as untimely without holding an evidentiary hearing.

Disposition

other