Frank Tepper v. David Close, Superintendent, State Correctional Institution at Houtzdale, et al.

The Petition presents four questions:

1. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment permits a State to require a criminal defendant to raise his Sixth Amendment ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim for the first time on initial collateral review while simultaneously foreclosing any state or federal forum from adjudicating that claim on the merits, where (i) he has no federal constitutional right to effective post-conviction counsel, Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U.S. 551 (1987), and Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722 (1991), and although Pennsylvania provides a state-rule-based right to PCRA counsel under Pa. R. Crim. P. 904, no state­ court corrective process existed pce-Bradley to vindicate ineffectiveness of that counsel; (ii) the State's then-controlling rule, Commonwealth v. Pitts, 981 A.2d 875 (Pa. 2009), categorically barred him from raising post-conviction-counsel ineffectiveness, a bar the State has since recognized was wrong, Commonwealth v. Bradley, 261 A.3d 381 (Pa. 2021), but refuses to apply retroactively; (iii) Shinn v. Ramirez, 596 U.S. 366 (2022), forecloses the federal evidentiary development needed to satisfy Martinez v. Ryan, 566 U.S. 1 (2012); and (iv) all subsequent state remedies are time-barred under 42 Pa. C.S. § 9545(b), rendering further state exhaustion futile, producing an "inescapable procedural trap" in which no court, state or federal, ever reaches the merits of the underlying Sixth Amendment claims defaulted by ineffective assistance of post-conviction counsel.

2. Whether the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments permit a State to prosecute and imprison a sworn peace officer for first-degree murder arising from a use of force while acting in his official capacity intervening in a felony assault committed in his presence, where the Commonwealth cannot produce, and the Office of Judicial Records has formally certified does not exist, any arrest warrant, Affidavit of Probable Cause, or judicial probable-cause determination under Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103