Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Alfred K. Albrecht, Sr., Appellant

Summary

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the PCRA court's dismissal of Alfred Albrecht's serial, pro se PCRA petition, filed more than twenty-one years after his judgment became final in 1987, holding that the PCRA's one-year time limitation is jurisdictional and strips the courts of authority to reach the merits. The court rejected each claimed exception: appellant never pleaded when he discovered the allegedly withheld Brady materials or the purported advances in fire science, and his earlier federal habeas litigation of the same claims defeated due diligence; his restricted death-row confinement was not shown to be illegal and so was not governmental interference; and a claimed colorable prior-counsel ineffectiveness cannot create a timeliness exception. Jurisdiction was relinquished, and his motion to submit the Third Circuit's Wilson v. Beard decision was denied as moot.