Commonwealth v. Franklin James Warfel
Whether trial counsel was ineffective for misadvising Warfel about a mandatory minimum, causing him to reject a plea of 3.5 to 7 years and receive 10 to 20 years after trial, where the offer and the mandatory minimum had been stated on the record at a pretrial hearing.
Summary by John A. Julian, Esq. Updated October 1, 2026.
- CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
- Docket1118 MDA 2025
- Citation2026 Pa. Super. 148
- DecidedJuly 13, 2026
- DispositionAffirmed and remanded with instructions
- OpinionRead the opinion | Court PDF
What the court held
The court affirmed the grant of PCRA relief. It deferred to the PCRA court's findings that Warfel would have taken the plea and that counsel, who wrongly told him judges could deviate from the mandatory minimum as in federal practice, did not understand or convey that Pennsylvania courts have no such discretion. Applying Lafler, Frye, and Commonwealth v. Steckley, all three ineffectiveness prongs were met, and the Commonwealth's argument that reciting the offer and mandatory sentence on the record at a call-of-the-list hearing inoculates against later claims was rejected. The remedy is reoffer of the plea and resentencing according to it.
Why it matters. A petitioner's credible testimony that he would have accepted the offer can satisfy prejudice, and a prosecutor's on-the-record recitation of the offer does not cure counsel's misadvice about exposure. The remedy for a rejected plea caused by ineffectiveness is reinstatement of the offer, not a new trial.
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This summary is for general information and is not legal advice. Read the opinion before relying on it.