Pennsylvania Gives Prisoners a Deadline. Their Appointed Lawyers Have None.

What happened

Nolan O’Neal waited nine years in a Pennsylvania prison for his court-appointed lawyer to file a single brief, ProPublica and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on October 13. According to the outlets, O’Neal was a 20-year-old high school student when Chester police arrested him for murder. At his 2005 trial, all four eyewitnesses who had identified him recanted and said police had pressured them. He has insisted he is innocent. Attorney Scott Galloway was appointed in 2013 to help him seek relief under the state’s Post Conviction Relief Act. The reporters found that Galloway received 41 extensions and in 2022 filed a two-page petition that raised one issue. The judge then began dismissing it, in part because it was filed too late.

ProPublica reported that Galloway said his duty of confidentiality kept him from commenting on the case. Judge George A. Pagano, who granted the extensions, declined to comment. O’Neal wrote the lawyer dozens of letters with arguments and leads, and in an interview he said, “We at times even have to fight the attorneys who are supposed to represent us.” He is still pursuing his case with a new appointed lawyer.

The reporters said the case fits a statewide pattern. They based that on records requests to courts in all 67 counties and a decade of dockets. According to the investigation, prisoners must draft their own petitions within a strict one-year deadline, while appointed lawyers generally face no timeline. At least 250 people waited five years or longer for their lawyers to act. Pennsylvania requires no specific training or qualifications for these lawyers. North Carolina, by contrast, screens and trains them. The outlets reported that the state began funding indigent defense only in 2023 and now contributes 57 cents per resident, while neighboring states average $26. Some counties pay as little as $500 a case.

ProPublica also reported the other side. The outlets noted that some delays have good reasons, because investigations can be complex. A Washington County court administrator said flat-fee contracts provide “financial stability for both parties.” Corrie Woods, who once held that county’s contract, said of such deals, “Your incentive is to do the least work.” According to the reporting, Erie County doubled its lawyers’ pay after one lawyer’s delays cost some clients their appeal rights. In August a state court committee proposed minimum qualifications that require relevant experience only “to the extent practicable.” A pending ACLU lawsuit claims the state’s funding approach has led to widespread violations of the right to counsel.

Our reflection

Read the two clocks side by side. A man in a cell, usually with no legal training, gets one year to write his own petition, and if he misses it the door shuts. The lawyer paid to finish that petition can ask for more time 41 times. Scripture has a word for an arrangement like that: “Unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 20:10).

Waiting is its own sentence. The letters go out and nothing real comes back, and slowly a person starts to believe he is a file at the bottom of someone’s pile. Whatever a court finally decides about O’Neal’s conviction, it should not take nine years to find out whether anyone will even make his argument.

Jesus told a story about a widow who kept going back to a judge who did not care, until he gave her justice just to be rid of her. Then Jesus drew the contrast. God is nothing like that judge. He hears the people who cry to him day and night, and he does not put them off. The Christ who went to the cross for people who had no claim on his time is called our advocate (1 John 2:1). He has never asked the Father for an extension.

Be careful about blaming only one lawyer in Delaware County. Woods was honest about the pull: under a flat fee, the incentive is to do the least. That pull lives in every one of us. Most of us have already sorted people into two piles, the ones whose letters we open and the ones whose letters can wait. The Spirit grows faithfulness in a person (Galatians 5:22), and a lot of faithfulness is simply answering the letter.

This can be fixed, and the reporting shows where. The first fix is a clock: appointed lawyers can be held to a deadline like the one prisoners already have. The harder fix is money and standards, which means the state paying for the work instead of leaving it to county contracts, and courts screening and training these lawyers the way North Carolina does. Erie County changed course after a failure, so a county can choose differently. At We The Revolt we sit with young men inside and walk with people coming home. We are not their lawyers. We have seen what silence does to a person, and how much it means when someone finally shows up.

If you live in Pennsylvania, ask your state legislators and the state courts what they will do about deadlines and funding for appointed counsel. If you live somewhere else, ask the same question about how your own state pays for this work, and pray for the people who are still waiting while you wait for an answer.

And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.

Luke 18:7-8

Source: ProPublica, “He Waited Nine Years in Prison for His Lawyer to File a Single Brief. In This State, There’s No Rule Against It.”