No do-overs?

Should an admitted child rapist be allowed to change his decision to plead guilty and demand his Constitutional right to a jury trial?

If your answer is yes, what happens if the prosecutor has already told the traumatized child victim they'll never have to testify?

They are the questions Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has decided to answer in the case of Commonwealth v. Jose A. Carrasquillo.

The state's highest court ruled Wednesday that it will consider the issues raised in an appeal by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office of an Oct. 8 state Superior Court ruling granting Carrasquillo, 31, the right to withdraw his guilty plea and be tried in the June 1, 2009 rape of an 11-year-old Kensington girl and the attempted assault of a 16-year-old girl.

At the Nov. 30, 2011 hearing where he was sentenced to 30 to 66 years in prison, Carrasquillo told Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Ramy I. Djerassi that he was innocent and asked to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial.

The District Attorney's office objected, telling the judge prosecutors would be prejudiced if they now had to go to trial because, after Carrasquillo pleaded guilty, the 11-year-old rape victim was promised she would never have to go into court and testify.

Djerassi rejected Carrasquillo's request, saying Carrasquillo was not acting in good faith and was trying to manipulate the justice system. The judge didn't believe Carrasquillo's claim that he was the Antichrist and being framed by federal agents trying to send him to China to assassinate the president.

A divided Superior Court panel disagreed and ruled that a defendant has the right to renege on a guilty plea up to sentencing if based on a "fair and just" belief in innocence. The court vacated Carrasquillo's guilty plea and sentence and said he should get his trial.

Now, the Supreme Court says it will determine whether a defendant has an absolute right to withdraw guilty plea before sentencing, or let the trial judge decide if the request is "an insincere assertion of innocence, unsupported by any facts or rational theory of defense." The court says it also wants to decide if the prosecutor would be prejudiced by the "undisputed psychological harm to a child rape victim" if the alleged rapist withdrew his guilty plea.

The issues are not unique to Carrasquillo's case. In its order accepting review of the appeal, the Supreme Court said it would consider at the same hearing an appeal in the case of James Hvizda, 47, a Chester County man accused of the March 25, 2012 stabbing death of his wife, Kimberly, outside the Upper Uwchlan Township convenience store where she worked.

Hvizda pleaded guilty in May 2012 to first-degree murder in a deal in which prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.

In July 2012, Hvizda said he wanted to withdraw his plea and take his chances at trial, a request denied by Chester County President Judge James P. MacElree II, who in August sentenced Hvizda to the mandatory life in prison without parole.

Last June 25, a Superior Court panel reversed MacElree and the Chester County District Attorney's office appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court did not set a date when the justices will hear argument on the appeals.