Commonwealth v. Heilman

OPINION BY JOHNSON, J.:

¶ 1 This case returns to our Court for the third time in the past fourteen years. We are called upon to consider the propriety of the trial court’s dismissal without a hearing of Heilman’s second petition under the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA), 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-46. With that petition, Heilman seeks testing under PCRA’s § 9543.1, the recently enacted section that permits an inmate to seek DNA testing of evidence used to convict him where such testing may establish his innocence of the crime(s) of conviction. The trial court dismissed Heilman’s petition because it…