Milique Wagner spent more than a decade in prison fighting his 2013 murder conviction. One obstacle he faced along the way to winning his freedom was opposition from his own lawyer. Under Pennsylvania's Post Conviction Relief Act, court-appointed attorneys can file what are known as "no-merit" letters, arguing against their clients' claims and effectively shutting down appeals, according to a joint investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica.
Wagner maintained that his conviction was built on an informant's lie. After the informant later confessed to committing the murder and testified that police and prosecutors knew the truth, Wagner said he couldn't persuade his trial lawyer to investigate. His appeal failed in 2015, leaving him facing life in prison. When a state law allowed Wagner to seek a new court-appointed lawyer under the PCRA, records show that attorney never spoke with the informant or investigated the detective on the case, who had been benched for secretly paying a witness. Instead, the lawyer urged the judge to shut down Wagner's petition, writing in June 2017: "There are no meritorious issues that could be raised."
What the Right Is Saying
Defenders of the current system say it serves an important function in preventing endless rounds of litigation. Judge Barbara McDermott, who recently retired from Philadelphia's Court of Common Pleas after overseeing many PCRA cases, defended the process as working as intended. "We're never going to be a perfect system, but within the system we've had we've done the best we can," she said, adding that no-merit letters play an important role in shutting down pointless challenges. "At some point, there has to be finality to cases." Some prosecutors argue that while individual errors occur, the overall system provides necessary oversight and prevents frivolous appeals from clogging courts. The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association has noted that many convictions are overturned through proper legal channels when genuinely new evidence emerges.
What the Left Is Saying
Civil rights advocates and defense attorneys say the investigation reveals systemic failures in Pennsylvania's post-conviction system. The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania has called for reforms to ensure court-appointed attorneys conduct meaningful investigations before filing no-merit letters. "When lawyers oppose their own clients' claims without doing basic due diligence, they become part of the problem rather than the solution," said a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, which works to exonerate wrongfully convicted individuals. Defense attorneys argue that PCRA petitioners have limited options when their court-appointed counsel actively works against them. "The no-merit letter mechanism creates a perverse incentive structure where lawyers can essentially abandon their clients without consequence," said one public defender who spoke on condition of anonymity due to ongoing cases.
What the Numbers Show
The investigation reviewed 250 of Philadelphia's reversed convictions and sentences since 2018 in violent felony cases. Wagner was one of at least 50 people whose lawyers said there was no basis to challenge their cases, only for judges to later decide they deserved new trials or sentences. Three years of invoices from court-appointed attorneys covering 83 homicide PCRA cases revealed the extent of minimal attorney work: those attorneys did not arrange a single phone call with the client about three-quarters of the time; they failed to contact trial lawyers in most cases; and they did not obtain police or prosecution case files—which have been key sources of evidence for overturned convictions—in approximately 75% of cases. In some instances, records show attorneys rejected clients' claims just days or weeks after being appointed and submitted filings containing factual errors, including the wrong defendant's name.
The Bottom Line
The investigation raises questions about how Pennsylvania's post-conviction review system handles claims from individuals seeking to challenge wrongful convictions. Daniel Anders, the administrative judge who oversees Philadelphia's court-appointed counsel system, did not respond to requests for comment. Wagner would remain in prison another six years before prosecutors acknowledged that police had hidden evidence suggesting the informant committed the murder and the detective was corrupt. Although Wagner maintains his innocence, he agreed to a plea deal for third-degree murder that allowed him to leave prison. What happens next may depend on whether state legislators pursue reforms to increase accountability for court-appointed attorneys or changes to the no-merit letter process itself.