"Reordering of considerations for necessary decisions within an unchanged penalty do not rise to an ex post facto violation"
How later courts described this case
- "Reordering of considerations for necessary decisions within an unchanged penalty do not rise to an ex post facto violation"
- limiting review to issues developed in brief
- retroactive application of 1996 changes to § 331.1 was not ex post facto violation; question of propriety of habeas corpus as remedy was not reached
- "[W]e leave for another day the question of the propriety of habeas corpus as a remedy.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice CASTILLE,
Concurring.
For the reasons stated in my concurring opinion in Coady v. Vaughn, 564 Pa. 604 , 770 A.2d 287 (2001) (Castille, J., concur *693 ring), which was joined by Madame Justice Newman, I am inclined to believe that non-frivolous constitutional challenges to the denial of parole are cognizable under Pennsylvania’s habeas corpus statute, 42 Pa.C.S. § 6501 et seq. See also Commonwealth v. Haag, 809 A.2d 271 (Pa.2002) (Castille, J., concurring). Although this Court has nonexclusive original jurisdiction of all cases sounding in habeas corpus, see 42 Pa.C.S. § 721(1), I believe that the better practice is for such petitions to be filed with the sentencing court pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 108(A) (“A petition for writ of habeas corpus challenging the legality of the petitioner’s detention or confinement in a criminal matter shall be filed with the clerk of courts of the judicial district in which the order directing the petitioner’s detention or confinement was entered.”).
I fully agree, however, with the lead opinion’s conclusion that the constitutional ex post facto claim raised here — a claim this Court has seen raised with increasing frequency on our allocatur and miscellaneous dockets — is entirely meritless. Subject to the foregoing qualifications concerning the cognizability of and venue for such claims, I join the lead opinion.
Justice NEWMAN joins this concurring opinion.