Sean M. Donahue v. Pennsylvania
FirstAmendment HabeasCorpus Privacy
In states that offer unitary review of direct appeal and post conviction relief matters, when an appellant's court appointed counsel gives the appellant a choice to accept either choosing between direct appeal or PCRA or forfeiting representation by counsel, is the appellant entitled to review of the portion of the unitary review that he was wrongly denied by counsel, either by state appellate court review nunc pro tunc or through federal habeas corpus review nunc pro tunc?
In states that reject a "good faith exception to the exclusionary rule", are appellants who later discover that the evidence that was used against them at trial could only have been lawfully admitted via a "good faith exception" entitled to state appellate court review nunc pro tunc or to federal habeas corpus review nunc pro tunc?
Whether a court-appointed criminal defense counsel violates a defendant's constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel by forcing the defendant to choose between direct appeal or post-conviction relief, thereby precluding unitary review of both direct and collateral claims