In December 2022, Attorney Noel obtained PCRA relief in the form of a new trial on behalf of her client, who had been convicted of third-degree murder. Dissatisfied with that result, the Commonwealth exercised its right to appeal the PCRA court’s order to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Following robust briefing by Attorney Noel, the Superior Court sided with Attorney Noel’s client, and affirmed the PCRA court’s order awarding him a new trial.

Attorney Noel was retained to litigate a claim under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act involving newly discovered evidence of judicial bias. Attorney Noel’s client had been sentenced to a draconian 60 to 150 years of incarceration for non-violent drug sales. Attorney Noel’s task was to bring her client home. To learn how she accomplished that task, read Attorney Noel’s article, published in For the Defense, the quarterly publication for Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Following a jury trial, the defendant was convicted of Aggravated Assault and Carrying a Firearm Without a License. Attorney Noel was retained to represent the defendant on appeal. Within 10 days of sentencing, Attorney Noel filed a post-sentence motion that would become the roadmap for the appeal to follow. In those motions and on appeal, Attorney Noel argued that the trial court’s jury instruction regarding the offense of Carrying a Firearm Without a License was legally deficient because it erroneously defined that crime as a strict liability offense. Additionally, Attorney Noel argued that the trial court’s erroneous instruction on the firearms offense irreparably tainted the jury’s verdict as to the offense of Aggravated Assault. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania adopted Attorney Noel’s arguments in full, vacated her client’s convictions, and remanded for a new trial.

Attorney Noel’s client was convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault, and was sentenced to serve 15 to 30 years in prison. Attorney Noel was retained to litigate a petition under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act, and alleged several claims involving ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel. Attorney Noel argued that her client’s trial attorney was ineffective for failing to object to the omission of a “no-adverse-inference” instruction from the trial court’s closing instructions to the jury. Attorney Noel further argued that her client’s appellate attorney was ineffective for failing to raise the issue on direct appeal, which would have resulted in automatic reversal of her client’s convictions and sentences. The trial court agreed and granted Attorney Noel’s client relief in the form of a new trial.

Attorney Noel was retained to investigate whether the defendant had potentially meritorious claims under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act, also known as the “PCRA.” After completing a diligent and thorough investigation of her client’s criminal history and the facts of the case, Attorney Noel realized that her client’s offense should have been graded as a misdemeanor of the first degree, not a felony of the first degree.

Following the submission of a robust Post-Conviction Relief Act Petition, of which Attorney Noel was the sole author, and an evidentiary hearing on the claims raised, the PCRA Court found that trial counsel had no reasonable strategic basis for failing to request an “imperfect” self-defense jury instruction, when requesting such an instruction had been the plan all along. As a result, the PCRA Court vacated Attorney Noel’s client’s murder conviction and granted him a new trial based on ineffective assistance of counsel.