Commonwealth v. DiNicola

I join the Majority Opinion in its entirety. I agree that appellee failed to overcome the presumption of counsel effectiveness and that the courts below erred in finding that he proved the merit in his claim. I write separately to further address the governing law on trial references to a defendant’s silence as well as the proper standard for assessing claims of counsel ineffectiveness in such instances.

Counsel’s course of action in this case obviously opened the door to proper responsive testimony concerning Trooper Fetzner’s pre-arrest interaction with appellee and his counsel. But, that…