Legal Question in Criminal Law in Pennsylvania

First and foremost, make sure that there is no way the Judge who took your plea can be said to have jurisdiction. Judges in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have jurisdiction in the County in which they were elected, this is true. However, county law enforcement often share and transfer jurisdicton of criminal acts. So even if your crime initialy occurred in another county if the crime continued through to the county in which you pled or if the county where the crime initially occurred transferred jurisdiction to the county in which you pled you may not have a challenge to jurisdiction.

If, however, you are certain the Judge, who took your plea had no jurisdiction to do so, you may file a Petition under the Post Conviction Relief Act. This Act is designed to provide folks convicted of crimes a last ditch effort to challenge the conviction. As for the deadlines to file, generally you have ten days after you plead guilty and are sentenced, to file a Petition or Motion asking the Judge to reconsider the sentence you were given or to allow you to withdraw your guilty plea. You also have thirty days from the day you are sentenced to file an appeal of the sentence to a higher court.

But, if ou believe you have missed the deadlines to file any appeals you may seek to file Nunc Pro Tunct, which means you are asking the Court,( in which you pled guilty), to permit you to file for relief despite having missed filing deadlines, you are in essence seeking to reinstate your appellate rights. The Nunc Pro Tunct filing requires that you provide a legally sound reason for having missed the statutory filing deadlines.

I would you suggest you go to the Courthouse where you plead and ask to see the Record of conviction and or sentencing order, this will provide you with the date when you plead and give you an idea of what your appeals date timeline would have been.

Also find out if at the time of your plea the proceedings were being recorded either by a Court Reporter/Stenographer or by Digital recording. The notes or transcripts from the plea proceedings would be helpful to allow you to determine whether or not the attorney or the Judge advised you of your appeals right. After every person is sentenced in Pennsyvania the attorney or sometimes the Judge orally tells the person his or her appellate rights. Also make sure you did not sign any documents entitled ,"Appellate rights or rights on appeal".

You would certainly lose any requests to file Nun Pro Tunct if the transcripts of the proceedings show you were duly advised of the rights and you failed to act. You may contact me further at [email protected].