Commonwealth v. Johnson

OPINION OF THE COURT

POMEROY, Justice.

This appeal stems from appellant’s plea of guilty to a general charge of murder in 1961 and his subsequent ef forts to obtain judicial review of the validity of that plea.

On January 27, 1961, Frank Johnson, the appellant, appeared at a Philadelphia police station and voluntarily surrendered himself in connection with the fatal stabbing of his mother-in-law, Mattie Aquilar. Johnson gave a written confession to the police, 1 the essence of which was that Johnson had stabbed his mother-in-law the previous evening during the course of a heated argument, and…