PHILADELPHIA — Court-appointed attorneys handling Pennsylvania Post Conviction Relief Act cases in Philadelphia routinely filed no-merit letters in matters that were later overturned, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica investigation. A review of 250 reversed convictions and sentences in violent felony cases since 2018 identified at least 50 people whose lawyers had filed such letters before their convictions or sentences were later overturned.

Pennsylvania's Post Conviction Relief Act allows people in prison to raise newly discovered evidence or argue that a previous lawyer mishandled the case. The state provides a lawyer in post-conviction proceedings, but under the act, that attorney can argue against the client's claims and withdraw from the case by filing a no-merit letter. A person challenging a conviction begins by filing a PCRA petition, often handwritten on a state-issued form, and on a first petition a judge assigns a lawyer to amend it.

In a majority of the 50 cases identified, convictions were overturned based on issues the PCRA lawyers had overlooked or rejected. Invoices for 83 homicide PCRA cases from 2023 to 2025 show attorneys did not arrange a phone call with the client, did not contact the trial lawyer, and did not obtain police or prosecution case files in about 75% of the cases. In some cases, attorneys filed no-merit letters just days or weeks after being appointed and submitted filings with factual errors, including the wrong defendant's name. Letters were also filed despite red flags such as a client's co-defendant already being exonerated or a detective being arrested for assaulting witnesses or tampering with evidence.

Attorney Stephen T. O'Hanlon sent no-merit letters to nine clients who later had their convictions or sentences overturned. Five of those cases were later overturned in state or federal court based on issues with the trial or plea he rejected or did not raise. O'Hanlon said the attorney code of ethics prevents him from making arguments he knows to be false or frivolous, and that in each case the judge and prosecutor agreed with him at the time. "Yes, it's good that they got off on some kind of five-years-later technicality, but it's wrong to suggest there was any problem with the no-merit letters," he said.

One of O'Hanlon's clients had a 2013 murder conviction that was later revisited after prosecutors acknowledged that police had hidden evidence suggesting that the informant had committed the murder and that the detective was corrupt. The client's 2015 appeal had failed. In June 2017, O'Hanlon wrote in a no-merit letter, "There are no meritorious issues that could be raised." The client later agreed to a plea deal for third-degree murder that allowed him to leave prison.

Robert Dunham, a lawyer who spent years training attorneys across the state to litigate death-penalty appeals, said petitioners are at a disadvantage when their court-appointed counsel does not investigate. "They are not lawyers and, in many cases, they are impaired. They don't have the ability to conduct a factual investigation because they're in jail," Dunham said.