Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Stephen Treiber, Appellant

Summary

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the denial of Post Conviction Relief Act relief to Stephen Treiber, who was convicted of first-degree murder for setting fire to his home while his two-year-old daughter slept inside and sentenced to death. The court rejected all fourteen presented claims: the canine-DNA-related ineffectiveness claims failed for lack of prejudice given overwhelming independent circumstantial evidence of guilt; the admissibility, unreliable-testimony, voir-dire, and self-representation claims were waived or previously litigated; and the motive-rebuttal, witness-impeachment, corrupt-source, disclosure-violation, character-evidence, expert-witness, and penalty-phase mitigation claims failed on arguable-merit, reasonable-basis, or prejudice grounds. Chief Justice Saylor dissented, contending trial counsel was ineffective for failing to mount a general-acceptance (novel scientific evidence) challenge to the Commonwealth's low-template canine DNA evidence and that a new trial was warranted.