Joseph John Hylan

Mr. Hylan represented me in a P.C.R.A. (post conviction relief) action against an illegal sentence on a criminal case. He started out slow to file documents but to his credit he did finally get the paperwork done and filed and I had my day in court. At the hearing the judge found that the sentence wa...s indeed illegal. No other finding was possible (1). For reasons unknown to me she denied the petition and set the stage for an appeal to the upper courts. She probably did not want to disturb the original judges decision and so shifted the burden to the upper court as is common. Mr. Hylan told me he was going to handle the appeal as it was his legal obligation to do so. It again took a long time for him to complete the filing and when he did so he "forgot" to include the requisite 1925b statement. The 1925b is a statement of issues of complaint and is the very root of an appeal. I put "forgot" in quotes because for a criminal defence attorney to "forget" the 1925b is like forgetting to get dressed before driving to work. It is nearly impossible. He sent me a letter saying "oops"! The case was denied by the upper court and I was thusly denied "meaningful judicial review" as is my Right in PA. Then when he was graciously afforded the opportunity to rectify the error by the superior court, he failed to do so. He promised me in my panicked phone conversations that he "was on it". My fatal error was my continued faith in him. I had a winning case and I quite probably served an extra 2 years in prison and parole because "oops" he "forgot". (1) Noteworthy also: A P.C.R.A. is, as a matter of rule, prepared by the inmate who has the burden of, doing all the legal research, writing it all in legal format, and filing it with the courts who then appoint an attorney only if merit is found. Mr Hylan told me that my filed petition was so well prepared that he would have little to do on this case and it was a winning case. It was indeed a "slam dunk" case but he blew it.

So far, two other clients fired him for lack of representation. He said he'd write up a will for my parents, but took a year to do it. Not only that, but he never had it notarized, nor did he inform my parents that they had to get it notarized, which caused a great deal of trouble after my dad died. ...I, unfortunately was arrested once. He actually said, "Well, something wasn't right with the arrest...It wasn't a clean arrest...not a good arrest..." He never went further with this. He just informed me that I was a victim of a bad arrest. He never helped me. I could have gone through the justice system myself without even having a lawyer instead of an incompetent one such as Joe Hylan.