Pennsylvania’s post-conviction legal system is fraught with delays

For more than half a century, Pennsylvania has promised people who claim they didn’t get a fair trial the right to “effective” post-conviction legal representation, regardless of their ability to pay. That is more than most states promise people after they have been convicted and lost their appeals.

Yet Pennsylvania has done little to fulfill that promise. The Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica previously reported that Pennsylvania lets lawyers resolve cases quickly using a practice that is discouraged in several states: filing “no-merit” letters, also known as Finley letters, urging judges to reject their clients’ handwritten or typed claims. In Philadelphia, dozens who had received such letters later had their convictions or sentences overturned based on issues their lawyers had rejected or overlooked.