Pennsylvania Supreme Court Rejects Public Record Presumption and Orders Hearing on Juror Bias Claim in Commonwealth v. Blakeney

Criminal Defense Laweyr Zak T. Goldstein, Esquire

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has issued an important decision in Commonwealth v. Blakeney, vacating the dismissal of a third Post-Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”) petition and remanding the case for further proceedings. The Court held that the PCRA court improperly relied on the discredited “public records presumption” and applied an unreasonably high diligence standard when it dismissed the petitioner’s serial petition as untimely. The decision continues the Supreme Court’s recent trend of reinforcing the fact that petitioners must be given a fair opportunity to prove newly discovered facts under the PCRA.

The Facts of the Case

The defendant was convicted of first-degree murder and related offenses for the 2000 killing of his girlfriend’s two-year-old child in Dauphin County. During jury selection, one juror, identified as Juror #7, initially marked “yes” on her juror questionnaire in response to the question of whether she or a close family member had been charged with a crime, then crossed out “yes” and marked “no.” More than twenty years later, new post-conviction counsel investigating potential juror bias discovered an obituary listing Juror #7’s family members. Counsel determined that the juror’s nephew had been charged with attempted murder and related offenses involving his own infant child. The juror’s nephew’s own preliminary hearing occurred on the very day that the juror was being questioned during voir dire in the defendant’s trial.

The defendant, whose prior appeals and PCRAs has been denied, filed a third PCRA petition arguing that this information constituted newly discovered facts that could not have been found earlier through reasonable diligence. He contended that Juror #7 provided a misleading answer during voir dire and that he was therefore denied his constitutional right to a fair and impartial jury.

The PCRA Court’s Ruling

The PCRA court issued a notice of intent to dismiss under Rule 907 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure and ultimately denied the petition without a hearing. The PCRA court held that the claim was untimely because the nephew’s criminal case had been reported in a 2002 newspaper article, meaning that the information was publicly available and could have been discovered earlier. The court concluded that the defendant had not exercised due diligence and that his claim therefore failed to satisfy the PCRA’s timeliness exception for newly discovered facts under 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(ii).

The Supreme Court’s Decision

The defendant appealed, and because he had received the death penalty at sentencing, the appeal went directly to the state Supreme Court. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated the dismissal and remanded the case for an evidentiary hearing. The Court emphasized that the PCRA court erred by invoking the “public record presumption,” a doctrine that previously held defendants responsible for facts contained in public sources such as newspapers or court filings. The Supreme Court has repeatedly disapproved of that presumption in recent years, explaining that it is inconsistent with the plain language of the PCRA. The PCRA requires only reasonable diligence, not omniscience. It also recognizes that many petitioners are in custody and do not have normal access to public records.

In the defendant’s case, the Court found that the 2002 newspaper article did not specifically identify Juror #7 or establish any connection between her and her nephew’s case. The article merely reported the nephew’s charges and provided no reason for defense counsel in 2002 to link that case to a juror from the defendant’s trial. Accordingly, the Court concluded that the lower court erred in holding the information was discoverable simply because it existed in the public domain. The proper inquiry, the Supreme Court reiterated, is whether the petitioner could have discovered the fact earlier through reasonable diligence, not just whether the fact appeared somewhere in public records.

Because the defendant’s petition presented specific, potentially verifiable claims about juror bias and newly discovered evidence, the Supreme Court ordered a remand for further factual development. The PCRA court must now conduct a hearing to determine whether the information indeed qualifies as newly discovered and whether it entitles the defendant to relief.

The Takeaway

Commonwealth v. Blakeney reaffirms that Pennsylvania courts may not deny PCRA petitions by assuming defendants should have discovered facts merely because they were once published or theoretically accessible. The Supreme Court continues to reject the public record presumption and to clarify that reasonable diligence is a practical, case-specific standard. Petitioners are not required to scour every public source in existence, and when a claim of newly discovered evidence is plausible, a hearing is often necessary before dismissal.

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