The attorney representing a man who pled guilty to third-degree murder in 2011 was not ineffective for advising him to do so, despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated mandatory minimum sentences of life without parole for juveniles on constitutional grounds the following year.
Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas Judge Robert L. Steinberg noted as a procedural matter that Angel Rivera’s petition for relief under the Post-Conviction Relief Act was untimely, denying it in turn. But the judge went on to address the merits of the man’s claim in concluding that Rivera’s trial counsel could not be faulted for failing to anticipate the high court’s seminal ruling in Miller v. Alabama.
