Commonwealth v. Cox

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Jones,

In 1958, Samuel Cox and a codefendant pleaded guilty in the then Court of Quarter Sessions to a series of eleven armed robberies, having been represented at their joint trial by a court-appointed attorney. Both men were sentenced to serve two consecutive terms of ten to twenty years in prison, plus a ten-year period of probation at the end of the jail sentences. In 1964, Cox filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. This petition was dismissed upon a finding that the guilty plea had been knowingly and…