Pennsylvania Appeals Court Flags 250 Cases Where Judges Failed to Stop Ineffective Lawyers
A yearlong review of court records shows judges in all 67 counties routinely accepted no-merit briefs from appointed attorneys who had minimal contact with clients.
By Andrew Hayes ·
The Pennsylvania Superior Court has identified more than 250 cases in the last 14 years where lower-court judges failed to intervene as appointed lawyers provided ineffective representation.
A yearlong review of court financial records, dockets, and appellate opinions reveals a pattern of judges accepting no-merit briefs, known as Finley letters, from attorneys who often had not spoken to their clients. This practice allows lawyers to argue against their own clients and request withdrawal from post-conviction cases.
The review tracked data from all 67 Pennsylvania counties. It found that in three-quarters of the cases examined, lawyers who filed Finley letters had never contacted the client, the trial attorney, or obtained available police files before concluding the claims lacked merit. State law does not require these basic steps, leaving judges as the primary check on the process.
The timeline of these failures spans more than a decade. In July 2025, Judge Frank Palumbo in Philadelphia observed a case where a lawyer was appointed to assist a prisoner challenging a conviction. Palumbo told the attorney to use a brief filed by a different lawyer in a related case. He noted, "I'm not saying plagiarize," but suggested the approach was simple. The attorney agreed, calling it a Finley letter. Palumbo later accepted the letter and dismissed the claim, allowing the lawyer to drop the client.
Appellate judges have criticized this behavior in numerous opinions. One Superior Court judge described an "embarrassing saga" of deficient lawyering in Berks County. Another judge referenced a baseball manager's quote to describe a Philadelphia judge and five attorneys who all missed appeals deadlines. The appeals court found that judges often continued to assign lawyers more cases even after higher courts flagged serious issues with their work.
The data shows that judges failed to appoint lawyers, held hearings where petitioners went unrepresented, or allowed lawyers to abandon clients in hundreds more cases. More than 200 times, judges oversaw lawyers who stalled cases for years. Despite these findings, the Superior Court affirms about 80% of lower-court rulings, citing strict deadlines and the need to defer to factual decisions made by lower courts.
Judicial discipline for these failures is rare. Only six lawyers have been publicly sanctioned for work on court-appointed post-conviction cases in the last decade. No lower-court judge has been publicly disciplined for mishandling a post-trial matter in at least ten years. Marissa Boyers Bluestine, a post-conviction lawyer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said, "Judges are in a terrific position to be able to prevent these kinds of injustices."
The system creates incentives for judges to accept Finley letters. Rejecting a letter forces a judge to find a new lawyer or compel the existing attorney to litigate a case they deemed meritless. In one recent case, the Superior Court found that a judge's action in forcing a lawyer to handle a hearing after writing a Finley letter resulted in the denial of a man's right to counsel. The lawyer treated the client "more like a cross-examination of a witness that [he] does not believe."
Rob Perkins, who leads the Allegheny Lawyers Initiative for Justice, stated that some lawyers fear judges will withhold future assignments if they litigate too aggressively. He added, "When a judge is handed a no-merit letter that sounds good, I think their inclination is to accept that the attorney did their job."
Judge John J. Mead of Erie defended the practice, saying, "Not all [claims] have merit." He noted that judges can determine whether a claim requires a hearing. However, the Superior Court has reversed lower-court decisions in hundreds of cases where judges accepted flawed Finley letters. These letters often contained factual errors, named the wrong client, or failed to include required notifications to the client.
In one Jefferson County case, Judge John Foradora sentenced a woman to up to 22 years in prison for passing two narcotics pills in prison. Her lawyer failed to appeal the sentence. After three reversals by the Superior Court, which found the punishment "unduly harsh and clearly unreasonable," the woman served more than eight years. Foradora, who said through a spokesperson that he was unable to comment, reappointed lawyers or imposed lengthy terms each time the case returned to his bench.
Shannon McDonald, an attorney in the Philadelphia suburbs, described a client whose petition sat on a Delaware County judge's desk for two years. By the time the judge ruled and dismissed the claim, the client had already finished his sentence and been released from prison. McDonald said, "Some judges don't consider PCRA a priority."
