Justia Pennsylvania Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Philadelphia police officers executed a search warrant for a residence where appellant Kareem Barnes lived with his two younger brothers. The search of one of the bedrooms yielded a firearm, assorted drugs and drug paraphernalia. As a result, the Commonwealth charged Appellant with possession with intent to deliver ("PWID"), possession of a firearm prohibited, and other related charges. Appellant waived his right to a jury trial and proceeded to a bench trial. At trial, Appellant's youngest brother testified that he, not Appellant, occupied the bedroom where the seized items were found and he, not Appellant, owned the contraband. The trial court, however, did not credit the brother's testimony, and instead, found Appellant guilty of the crimes charged. The trial court sentenced Appellant to 5 to 10 years' imprisonment on the PWID conviction, which included a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence based on the trial court's finding that Appellant was in constructive possession of drugs "in close proximity to" a firearm. No further penalty was imposed for the other convictions. This appeal presented the issue of whether a challenge, on direct appeal, alleging that a mandatory minimum sentence violated "Alleyne v. United States," (133 S.Ct. 2151 (2013)), implicating the "legality" of a sentence for issue preservation purposes, and thus was not waivable. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that an "Alleyne" challenge implicated legality of sentence, and that Appellant's sentence violated "Alleyne." Accordingly, the Court reversed the trial court's decision, vacated Appellant's judgment of sentence, and remanded for resentencing. View "Pennsylvania v. Barnes" on Justia Law

In 2012, Appellant Frankie Rosado was accused of sexually abusing his former girlfriend’s teenage daughter, whereupon he was charged with one count each of indecent assault, corruption of minors, and unlawful contact with minor. Appellant, then represented by a public defender, proceeded to trial, whereafter he was convicted of the aforementioned offenses and later sentenced to an aggregate term of 33 to 69 months imprisonment. Appellant hired new counsel to represent him at the post-sentencing and appellate stages of his case. Appellate Counsel filed a postsentence motion raising, as relevant here, a sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim, but the trial court denied relief. Appellate Counsel then filed a notice of appeal to the Superior Court which later summarily affirmed the trial court's judgment. Appellant later filed for post-conviction relief, arguing he received ineffective assistance of counsel. In his application, appellant argued that Appellate Counsel filed a document styled as a “preliminary” concise statement, wherein he raised three issues for appeal, but failed to file a revised concise statement. When the appellate brief was filed, Appellate Counsel abandoned the three issues raised in the preliminary statement and raised three others. In an unpublished memorandum opinion, the Superior Court, while noting the three issues preserved in Appellant’s concise statement, found a sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim to be waived, as it was not included therein. The PCRA court found that Appellate Counsel’s conduct did not amount to ineffectiveness per se, and, accordingly, denied relief. So the issue for the Supreme Court's review was whether filing an appellate brief which abandoned all preserved issues in favor of unpreserved ones constituted ineffective assistance of counsel per se. After careful review, the Court held that it did, and so the Court vacated the Superior Court’s order and remanded this case back to that court for further proceedings. View "Pennsylvania v. Rosado" on Justia Law

Sheldon Hannibal appealed an order of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County denying his petition for relief from his death sentence. In 1992, Hannibal and a co-defendant, Larry Gregory, got into an argument with the victim, Peter LaCourt. LaCourt was pistol whipped before attempting to flee. Hannibal shot LaCourt six times. A fifteen-year-old girl witnessed the robbery and beating, and later gave statements to police, implicating Hannibal and Gregory. She also testified at their preliminary hearings. However, she and two of her female friends were murdered "execution-style" in an apartment located in the same housing development where LaCourt had been murdered. The jury convicted appellant and codefendant of first-degree murder. Hannibal applied for post-conviction relief, raising a number of issues for the Supreme Court's review. Finding that Hannibal was not entitled to relief, the Court affirmed dismissal of his PCRA petition. View "Pennsylvania v. Hannibal" on Justia Law

This direct appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court arose from the torture and murder of Jennifer Daugherty, a 30-year-old intellectually disabled woman. Over the course of two days, appellant and his five co-conspirators committed escalating acts of humiliation, abuse and torture upon Ms. Daugherty. The conspirators ultimately voted to kill Ms. Daugherty and murdered her in a vicious manner, including stabbing her in the chest, slashing her wrists and choking her. Appellant ultimately accepted responsibility by pleading guilty to first-degree murder, second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. He received the death penalty. After careful review of appellant’s fourteen issues, the Supreme Court was "constrained" to vacate the judgment of sentence and award a new penalty hearing on appellant’s thirteenth claim. Appellant had no prior felony or misdemeanor convictions; defense counsel proposed a stipulation stating that appellant had no prior criminal history. The prosecution did not object to the introduction of appellant's criminal history, but stated he would not stipulate to a mitigating circumstance. In his case in mitigation, defense counsel instead presented evidence of appellant’s lack of convictions through the testimony of a police detective, and the Commonwealth presented no contrary evidence. In closing, the prosecutor essentially admitted the fact to which he had refused a stipulation, but then argued appellant’s lack of criminal convictions was of little significance given other circumstances of the crime. Appellant argued on appeal of his death sentence that the jury was required to conclude a statutory mitigator was established. The Commonwealth noted that while it did not rebut appellant’s lack of criminal convictions, it argued to the jury “that the lack of criminal history was insignificant” given other circumstances, and “that mitigating factor should be given no weight by the jury and not consider it a mitigating factor.” The Supreme Court vacated the sentence and remanded for further proceedings: "[W]hen it is undisputed (or indisputable) the mitigator objectively exists, it would be wise for the prosecutor to stipulate and for the jury to be directed to find the mitigator, so the death penalty statute is followed. Failure to take such measures, for whatever reason, results in the situation here: the court below . . . accepted a verdict of death that included an arbitrary failure to honor a statutory mandate." View "Pennsylvania v. Knight" on Justia Law

Appellant Michael R. Veon, a twenty-two-year member and eventual Minority Whip of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, was entitled to $20,000 annually to cover business expenses associated with maintenance of a district office, as well as $4,000 for postage. Pursuant to House Democratic Caucus (“Caucus”) procedures, Veon could seek additional funds from Caucus leadership if he exhausted his $20,000 allocation, and it was not uncommon for Caucus members to do so. In 1991, Veon formed the Beaver Initiative for Growth (“BIG”), a non-profit corporation. BIG received all of its funding from public sources, primarily through the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (“DCED”). Veon's Beaver County district office initially shared space with BIG, but opened two more district offices, for which the rent easily exceeded his caucus allotment. Veon was criminally charged with various offenses relating to BIG paying the district offices' rents. After some charges were withdrawn, Veon went to trial on nineteen counts. In the portion of the jury charge that was relevant to Veon’s appeal to the Supreme Court, the trial court defined the pecuniary requirement in the conflict of interest statute. The statute prohibited public officials from leveraging the authority of their offices for “private pecuniary benefit;” at issue here was whether or not that benefit extended to what the trial court in this case referred to as “intangible political gain.” In addition, another issue before the Supreme Court was whether the Commonwealth could receive restitution following prosecution of a public official for a crime involving unlawful diversion of public resources. The Court concluded the trial court committed prejudicial error in its jury charge regarding conflict of interest, and that it erred in awarding restitution to the DCED. Veon's judgment of sentence was vacated, the matter remanded for a new trial on conflict of interest, and for other proceedings. View "Pennsylvania v. Veon" on Justia Law

The Supreme Court granted discretionary review to determine the propriety of a trial court considering victim impact evidence at a sentencing proceeding where the offenses at issue were not crimes against a person. The Superior Court held, as a matter of law, such evidence was irrelevant and inadmissible at sentencing under such circumstances, the trial court therefore abused its discretion, and resentencing was required. The Supreme Court disagreed with this broad holding and, in particular, the construction of 42 Pa.C.S. Section 9738 as a provision circumscribing evidentiary relevance at sentencing. Accordingly, the Court vacated the Superior Court's order and remanded for resentencing. View "Pennsylvania v. Ali" on Justia Law

In 2013, Rahiem Fant pled not guilty to various charges related to an incident during which he allegedly stabbed a man in the abdomen and arm. While waiting for trial, he was detained at the Clinton County Correctional Facility. In 2014, approximately one week before his scheduled trial, Fant’s counsel received from the Commonwealth a production of recordings made at the Facility. All but two of the recordings consisted of conversations that occurred between Fant and his visitors in the Facility’s visitation room. As a result of these recorded visit conversations, law enforcement personnel retrieved additional evidence they sought to use at trial. Fant filed a motion in limine seeking to exclude at trial the visit conversation recordings and the evidence discovered as a result of them. He argued that the recordings violated Pennsylvania's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act. The Commonwealth countered that Section 5704(14) of the Act permitted these recordings because it authorized county correctional facilities to record “any telephone calls from or to an inmate,” as long as certain conditions were met. Following a hearing, the suppression court granted Fant’s motion to suppress, making several findings of fact before concluding that the visit conversations were not “telephone calls” because the “every day common sense use of the word telephone does not include this scenario.” The Commonwealth appealed, and the issue before the Supreme Court was whether the calls made on the "telephone" system for visit conversations were indeed "telephone calls." On this point, the Supreme Court affirmed the suppression court, finding that the "telephone" system as used by the prison system was not a telephone in its ordinary meaning under the Act, and therefore were not subject to an exception under the Act. View "Pennsylvania v. Fant" on Justia Law

In the three consolidated appeals, all of which originated in the Court of Common Pleas of York County before the same judge, the Superior Court applied its en banc decision in "Commonwealth v. Hainesworth," (82 A.3d 444 (2013) (en banc)), and concluded that Appellees were entitled to specific performance of their plea agreements, i.e., Appellees’ sexual offender registration requirements were governed by "Megan’s Law," which was in effect when Appellees entered their plea agreements, and not by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), which superseded Megan’s Law. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to examine "Hainesworth" and its applicability to Appellees’ cases. Consistent with the Superior Court’s decision in Hainesworth, the Supreme Court held that Appellees are entitled to the benefit of the bargains struck with the Commonwealth when the trial court accepted the parties’ plea agreements. View "Pennsylvania v. Grace" on Justia Law

In his second collateral capital appeal, Jermont Cox challenged the denial of his Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) petition, contending that newly-discovered facts entitle him to a new trial. Following its thorough review, the Supreme Court agreed with the PCRA court’s determination that Cox’s petition was untimely and therefore affirmed its order. View "Pennsylvania v. Cox" on Justia Law

This case was a direct appeal of an interlocutory order precluding the Commonwealth from presenting victim impact evidence at a re-sentencing hearing of Appellee Joseph Kindler, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 1983 and previously was sentenced to death. The preliminary issue for the Supreme Court's review was whether it had jurisdiction to entertain the appeal. After review, the Court concluded that it did not: thus, it did reach the merits of the Commonwealth’s claim that the trial court erred by entering the order precluding the Commonwealth from presenting victim impact evidence at Appellee’s re-sentencing hearing. Instead, the case was transferred to the Superior Court. View "Pennsylvania v. Kindler" on Justia Law