Justia Pennsylvania Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

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

James Ball, III was charged with and tried for a summary offense before a Magisterial District Judge (“MDJ”). The MDJ convicted Ball of a lesser included offense, implicitly acquitting him of the greater charged offense. Ball appealed his conviction to the court of common pleas (“the trial court”) for a de novo trial, whereupon the Commonwealth sought to re-try him on the greater offense. The trial court allowed the Commonwealth to try Ball on the original charge, notwithstanding Ball’s objection that reinstating that charge violated the double jeopardy clauses of the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions. Ball was convicted of the greater offense, and he appealed to the Superior Court. Finding merit in Ball’s double jeopardy claim, the Superior Court reversed the trial court and discharged Ball. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted allocatur to determine whether the constitutional prohibition on double jeopardy barred the Commonwealth from reinstating Ball’s implicitly-acquitted greater offense. The Court held that the Commonwealth could not prosecute a defendant for the greater offense under these circumstances. Accordingly, the Court affirmed the Superior Court on this issue. Furthermore, the Court granted allocatur to decide whether the Superior Court erred when it discharged Ball after having found that the prohibition on double jeopardy precluded his retrial on the greater summary offense. On this issue, the Court concluded that the Superior Court did err. "A MDJ has the authority, sua sponte, to convict a defendant of an uncharged, lesser included offense, and the defendant has a right to have that conviction reviewed by a court of record." The case was remanded back to the trial court for a trial de novo limited only to the lesser included offense. View "Pennsylvania v. Ball III" on Justia Law

In 2002, a jury convicted Manuel Sepulveda of two counts of first-degree murder and related charges for the deaths of John Mendez and Ricardo Lopez. The jury sentenced Sepulveda to death for each of the murders. At issue in this appeal was whether, following remand from an appellate court with specific instructions, a Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) court may treat new claims raised by the petitioner, which were outside the scope of the remand order, as amending the petitioner’s first, timely PCRA petition. After review, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that because the PCRA petition had been fully adjudicated, and because the PCRA court was required to proceed in conformance with the remand order, the PCRA court was without authority to permit amendment. View "Pennsylvania v. Sepulveda" on Justia Law

In 2008, Scott Kingston was driving home from a party with his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Mroz, who was sitting in the passenger seat. Kingston drove his vehicle off the road and into a ditch. When police officers arrived, Mroz told them that Kingston, who was visibly intoxicated, had been driving the vehicle. The police arrested Kingston and charged him with driving under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance (“DUI”) and several other Motor Vehicle Code violations. Kingston had three prior DUI convictions. If convicted of a fourth, he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of one-year incarceration. Prior to his trial, Kingston sent Mroz three letters from jail, where he was being held on charges unrelated to this appeal. In his first letter, Kingston asked Mroz to speak to Kingston’s parents, and to find out whether they were willing to testify that Kingston’s father was driving the vehicle on the night of the accident. A few weeks later, Kingston sent Mroz a second letter, asking her to tell "them" that she was driving on the night of the accident, assuring Mroz that if she took the blame for the collision "they" could only "give [her] a fine." Kingston sent Mroz a third letter, again discussing his strategy if Mroz took blame for the accident and "pleading the 5th." Contrary to Kingston’s wishes, Mroz testified that Kingston was driving at the time of the accident. Kingston proceeded to trial. However, due to an administrative oversight, Mroz did not receive notice that the Commonwealth had subpoenaed her to testify at Kingston’s trial until after it had commenced. When she failed to appear on the morning of Kingston’s trial, the court issued a bench warrant for Mroz and proceeded without her. The jury ultimately acquitted Kingston after Kingston’s father falsely testified that he was driving the vehicle on the night in question. The day after Kingston’s trial, Mroz met with a detective and explained the subpoena mix-up. Mroz also told the detective about the letters that Kingston had sent to her from jail. The Commonwealth subsequently charged Kingston with, inter alia, three counts of soliciting perjury and three counts of soliciting to hinder apprehension or prosecution. The question on appeal of the denial of PCRA relief this case, raised under a derivative theory of ineffective assistance of counsel, was whether Section 906 of the Crimes Code proscribed only convictions for two or more distinct inchoate crimes, or whether it also prohibited convictions for two or more counts of the same inchoate crime. The Supreme Court held that Section 906 barred convictions only for multiple distinct inchoate crimes. Because the Superior Court concluded otherwise in remanding for an ineffectiveness hearing, the Supreme Court reversed. View "Pennsylvania v. Kingston" on Justia Law

An investigation led police to secure a search warrant for a residence in Lancaster County, where appellant Thomas-Lutz-Morrison lived with his mother and brother. A March 2, 2012, search led to the seizure of four computers and an Apple iPhone 4. On the same day, appellant admitted to detectives he had downloaded child pornography files to his computer. An examination revealed 142 child pornography videos and 45 child pornography images on the computer along with 15 child pornography images on appellant’s iPhone. Appellant was charged with 77 counts of sexual abuse of children (possession of child pornography). Appellant entered an open plea of guilty to three counts of possession of child pornography; the remaining charges were withdrawn by the Commonwealth. That same day, appellant was sentenced to consecutive one-year terms of probation on each count. The trial court also notified appellant his convictions subjected him to lifetime registration under SORNA as a Tier III offender. Appellant reserved an objection to that classification, averring the statute was ambiguous, and the only reason it arguably was triggered was because his plea encompassed more than one count. On appeal to the Superior Court, appellant claimed he should be classified as a Tier I offender because his multiple Tier I convictions arose from a single nonviolent course of conduct, and his plea occurred in a single hearing. The Superior Court affirmed in a memorandum opinion. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted review of the question whether appellant was properly subject to lifetime reporting under SORNA. Decided after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in "A.S. v. Pa. State Police, ( __A.3d __(2016)), the Court found that, like the "A.S." case, appellant here was charged in a single information arising from the search of his property; he entered court as a first-time offender on those charges and pled guilty to three counts - all Tier I offenses; and there were no direct victims of his crimes, much less multiple direct victims. "As such, the statute requires an act, a conviction, and a subsequent act to trigger lifetime registration for multiple offenses otherwise subject to a fifteen- or twenty-five-year period of registration." The Court reversed the Superior Court and remanded for imposition of a fifteen-year reporting requirement under SORNA. View "Pennsylvania v. Lutz-Morrison" on Justia Law

In this appeal by the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) from a grant of mandamus relief, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court revisited an issue concerning the proper construction of the lifetime-registration triggering language “two or more convictions” in Pennsylvania’s former sex offender registration statute, Megan’s Law II (superseded by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA)). This dispute arose after appellee had completed his sentence for the underlying crimes. Proceeding under a belief he was subject to a ten-year SORNA registration period (a belief shared at sentencing by the court and the prosecutor), appellee filed a Petition for Review in the Nature of a Complaint in Mandamus in the Commonwealth Court’s original jurisdiction shortly before expiration of that period. The petition sought to compel PSP to correct appellee’s sexual offender registration status from lifetime registrant to ten-year registrant and to remove him from the registry when the ten-year period expired. In the course of litigation, the parties attached exhibits including the transcripts from appellee’s guilty plea and sentencing proceedings; ultimately, the parties stipulated discovery was unnecessary and cross-motions for summary judgment were filed. PSP maintained any person with two or more qualifying convictions at the moment of sentencing, such as appellee, was subject to lifetime registration. PSP claimed it properly interpreted and applied the statute and appellee had no right to mandamus relief. After review, the Supreme Court held that the provision, considered in the context of the statutory language as a whole, was amenable to two reasonable constructions. The Court held that the registration statute, which set forth a graduated scheme of registration, encompassed a recidivist philosophy. The Court therefore concluded the statute required an act, a conviction, and a subsequent act to trigger lifetime registration for multiple offenses otherwise triggering a ten-year period of registration. Accordingly, the Court affirmed. View "A.S. v. PA State Police" on Justia Law

Wayne Mitchell appealed the dismissal of his second petition for relief under the Post-Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”). Mitchell was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the September 10, 1997 murder of his estranged wife, Robin Little. The PCRA court dismissed Mitchell's petition without a hearing, determining the application was untimely made. The Supreme Court agreed and affirmed. View "Pennsylvania v. Mitchell" on Justia Law

Appellant Terrance Washington was charged with almost two dozen robbery offenses as well as related crimes, and he was convicted by jury trial relative to many of the charges and after pleas concerning others. In 1998, the common pleas court imposed an aggregate sentence of 35 to 70 years’ imprisonment, with the aggregate minimum encompassing multiple mandatory minimum sentences under Section 9712 of the Sentencing Code. Appellant did not initially pursue a direct appeal. He later obtained appellate review nunc pro tunc, however. That appeal was unsuccessful, and the judgments of sentence became final in 2006. Later that year, Appellant filed a timely petition under the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA). Notably, Appellant did not raise a Sixth Amendment challenge to the above directives of Section 9712(b). The PCRA court dismissed the petition, and several procedural irregularities ensued, which were addressed in a 2011 order of the Superior Court according Appellant the right to appeal from the dismissal of the post-conviction petition. In 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its Alleyne decision, overruling its prior precedent. The effect of Alleyne was to invalidate a range of Pennsylvania sentencing statutes predicating mandatory minimum penalties upon non-elemental facts and requiring such facts to be determined by a preponderance of the evidence at sentencing. The Superior Court disposed of Appellant’s appeal from the denial of postconviction relief via memorandum opinion in 2015, affirming in relevant part. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court allowed appeal to consider the issue, as framed by Appellant, of “[a]re the mandatory sentences imposed upon petitioner illegal pursuant to Alleyne?” The Court held that Alleyne did not apply retroactively to cases pending on collateral review, and that Appellant’s judgment of sentence, therefore, was not illegal on account of Alleyne. View "Pennsylvania v. Washington" on Justia Law

In July 2010, appellee William Childs was residing with Michael Beander and Samuel Andrews in Andrews’ house. On July 29, 2010, Andrews invited Bryant Bell (“Victim”) to come over to celebrate Victim’s birthday. All four men were socializing in the residence when Childs and Victim began to argue. Beander and Victim exited the residence and sat on the front steps, while Andrews retreated to his bedroom. Childs remained in the house. But almost immediately, Childs and Victim restarted their argument, trading insults and threats through the screen door. After a few minutes of this back-and-forth, Victim ascended the stairs, picked up a broomstick that had been sitting on the porch, and approached the door. Victim overcame Childs’ efforts to hold the screen door closed and entered the residence. Victim struck Childs with the broomstick several times before Childs stabbed Victim in the chest. Although Childs stabbed Victim only once, Victim died from this wound. Childs was arrested and charged with homicide and possessing instruments of crime (“PIC”). In this appeal by the Commonwealth, the issue presented for the Supreme Court's review was whether Childs was entitled to a castle doctrine jury instruction pursuant to 18 Pa.C.S.A. sec. 505(b)(2.1), which became effective after Childs was charged with the crimes at issue but prior to his trial on those charges. The Court concluded that section 505(b)(2.1) did not affect a person’s right to use deadly force within his or her home, but rather created an evidentiary presumption relevant to the evaluation of such a claim of self-defense, and was therefore a procedural statute. As such, Childs was entitled to that jury instruction. The Court affirmed the Superior Court’s decision vacating Childs’ judgment of sentence and remanded for a new trial. View "Pennsylvania v. Childs" on Justia Law