Com. v. Coffield, E. ( 2015 )

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NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
PENNSYLVANIA
Appellee
v.
ERIC COFFIELD
Appellant No. 1518 EDA 2014
Appeal from the PCRA Order of April 22, 2014
In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County
Criminal Division at No.: CP-51-CR-027251-1991
BEFORE: DONOHUE, J., WECHT, J., and JENKINS, J.
MEMORANDUM BY WECHT, J.: FILED MARCH 09, 2015
Eric Coffield appeals the April 22, 2014 order denying relief upon
Coffield’s petition under the Post-Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”), 42 Pa.C.S.
§§ 9541, et seq. We conclude that the PCRA court correctly determined that
Coffield’s petition was filed outside the PCRA’s time limit, leaving the PCRA
court without jurisdiction to address the substantive allegations contained in
that petition. We affirm.
In light of our disposition, we need not embellish the following brief
account of the factual history underlying this case, which we provided on
another occasion when Coffield appeared before this Court:
Coffield’s conviction arose out of an incident that occurred on
January 4, 1991. Coffield was observed by Philadelphia police
officers operating a stolen vehicle at a high rate of speed along
Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While
attempting to elude the police, Coffield drove recklessly and in
excess of 100 miles per hour. Meanwhile, the passengers in the
stolen vehicle, who were also involved in the theft of the
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automobile, pleaded with Coffield to slow down and stop the car.
He ignored their requests and told them to shut up. Coffield
eventually lost control of the car and crashed into two trees
killing the front seat passenger and seriously injuring the two
back seat passengers.
On September 17, 1991, Coffield was found guilty, after a bench
trial, of murder in the third degree, [18 Pa.C.S. § 2502(c),] two
(2) counts each of simple assault[, 18 Pa.C.S. § 2701(a),] and
aggravated assault[, 18 Pa.C.S. § 2702(a)], and one (1) count
each of theft [by unlawful taking, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3921(a),] and
receiving stolen property[, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3925(a)]. Post-trial
motions were filed, new counsel was appointed[,] and
supplemental post-trial motions then were filed. On March 4,
1993, the post-trial motions were denied and Coffield was
sentenced to not less than ten (10) nor more than twenty (20)
years for his murder conviction. He also received consecutive
sentences of not less than ten (10) nor more than twenty (20)
years for each aggravated assault conviction. Furthermore a
consecutive sentence of not less than two and one[ ]half (2 ½)
nor more than five (5) years was imposed for the theft
conviction.1 The aggregate sentence imposed was not less than
thirty-two and one half (32 ½) nor more than sixty-five (65)
years’ imprisonment.
____________________
1 The sentence for receiving stolen property was
suspended.
Coffield filed a motion for modification of sentence that was
subsequently denied. Thereafter, he filed an appeal with this
Court alleging, among other things, that the trial court abused
its discretion by imposing sentences on the aggravated assault[]
and theft convictions outside the sentencing guidelines without
stating the applicable sentencing ranges and the reasons for the
deviation. This Court found that the trial court failed to state the
applicable sentencing ranges, the prior record scores, and the
reasons for deviating from the sentencing guideline ranges.
Consequently, this Court vacated the judgment of sentence with
respect to the aggravated assaults and the theft convictions and
remanded for re-sentencing. Commonwealth v. Coffield,
641 A.2d 1220 (Pa. Super. 1993) (No. 944 Philadelphia 1993,
unpublished memorandum, filed 12/28/93). On January 21,
1994, Coffield filed a petition for allowance of appeal with the
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Supreme Court that was subsequently denied on September 12,
1994. Commonwealth v. Coffield, 542 Pa. 657, 668 A.2d
1122 (1994) (No. 51 E.D. Allocatur Docket 1994, 9/12/94).
Commonwealth v. Coffield, 2409 Phila. 1997, slip op. at 1-3 (Pa. Super.
Dec. 7, 1998) (unpublished memorandum).
On June 6, 1997, the trial court convened a re-sentencing hearing. At
that hearing, Coffield addressed the court. The trial court acknowledged,
but was unimpressed by, Coffield’s expression of remorse. After reviewing
the applicable sentencing guidelines, and after underscoring the
egregiousness of Coffield’s conduct and its tragic results, the trial court
imposed the same sentence that it imposed in the first sentencing
proceeding. Coffield appealed. In a memorandum entered on December 7,
1998, this Court affirmed Coffield’s judgment of sentence. Id. Our
Supreme Court denied allowance of appeal on May 25, 1999.
Commonwealth v. Coffield, 739 A.2d 540 (Pa. 1999) (per curiam).
On September 20, 1999, Coffield filed his first PCRA petition.
Appointed counsel filed an amended petition. The PCRA court denied relief
on September 18, 2001, and Coffield filed no appeal. On February 4, 2002,
Coffield filed a second PCRA petition. On May 30, 2003, the PCRA court
dismissed Coffield’s petition as untimely. Coffield appealed and we affirmed.
Commonwealth v. Coffield, 1880 EDA 2003 (Pa. Super. Feb. 18, 2004)
(unpublished judgment order). Therein, we noted that Coffield’s judgment
of sentence became final for purposes of the PCRA’s time limit on August 23,
1999. Id. slip op. at 2. Because Coffield had not filed his PCRA petition by
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August 23, 2000, one year after his judgment of sentence became final, and
failed successfully to invoke one of the statutory exceptions to the PCRA
court’s one-year time limit, we affirmed the PCRA court’s determination that
his petition was untimely. Id. Coffield filed a petition for allowance of
appeal with our Supreme Court, which denied review on August 5, 2004.
Commonwealth v. Coffield, 856 A.2d 831 (Pa. 2004) (per curiam).
Coffield filed the instant PCRA petition, his third, on July 7, 2011.
Counsel was appointed and filed an amended PCRA petition, a motion for
PCRA discovery, and a Motion for funds to hire an investigator. PCRA Court
Opinion (“P.C.O.”), 9/23/2014, at 3. The PCRA court held hearings on
February 28 and again on April 11, 2014. During the interim, the court filed
its notice of intent to dismiss pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907. On March 18,
2014, Coffield filed a response to the PCRA court’s Rule 907 notice. On April
22, 2014, following the April 11, 2014 hearing, the PCRA court dismissed the
petition as untimely under the PCRA’s time limits.1
On May 15, 2014, Coffield timely filed a notice of appeal from the
PCRA court’s order. On July 10, 2014, the PCRA court entered an order
directing Coffield to file a concise statement of the errors complained of on
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1
Coffield spends a great deal of time disputing what it treats as the
PCRA court’s findings regarding the merits of the substantive issues raised in
the instant petition. However, on a fair reading of its opinion, it is clear that
the PCRA court touched upon those arguments only insofar as they informed
the timeliness inquiry.
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appeal pursuant to Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b). Coffield timely complied,2 and the
PCRA court filed its Rule 1925(a) opinion on September 23, 2014, ripening
this case for our review.
In dismissing Coffield’s third PCRA petition as untimely, the PCRA court
necessarily determined that it lacked jurisdiction to review the claims set
forth in that petition. See Commonwealth v. Leggett, 16 A.3d 1144,
1145 (Pa. Super. 2011). Consequently, we must begin by reviewing the
jurisdictional question.3
It is well-established that the PCRA time limits are jurisdictional, and
must be strictly construed, regardless of the potential merit of the claims
asserted. Leggett, 16 A.3d at 1145 (Pa. Super. 2011); Commonwealth v.
Murray, 753 A.2d 201, 202-03 (Pa. 2000), abrogated on other grounds,
943 A.2d 264 (Pa. 2008). “[N]o court may properly disregard or alter [these
filing requirements] in order to reach the merits of the claims raised in a
PCRA petition that is filed in an untimely manner.” Murray, 753 A.2d
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2
About this statement, the PCRA court observed that the statement was
“anything but terse. In fact, it’s more akin to a full-on, florid appellate
brief—and an improper one at that.” P.C.O. at 4 n.2. The court went on to
note that the statement spans eleven unnumbered and single-spaced pages
in a small font.
3
We review a PCRA court’s ruling to determine whether it is supported
by the evidence of record and is free of legal error. Commonwealth v.
Garcia, 23 A.3d 1059, 1061 (Pa. Super. 2011).
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at 203; see Commonwealth v. Gamboa-Taylor, 753 A.2d 780, 783
(Pa. 2000).
Despite facial untimeliness, a tardy PCRA petition nonetheless will be
considered timely if (but only if) the petitioner pleads and proves one of the
three exceptions to the one-year time limit enumerated in
subsection 9545(b) of the PCRA, which provides as follows:
(1) Any petition under this subchapter, including a second or
subsequent petition, shall be filed within one year of the date the
judgment becomes final, unless the petition alleges and the
petitioner proves that:
(i) the failure to raise the claim previously was the
result of interference by government officials with the
presentation of the claim in violation of the Constitution or
laws of this Commonwealth or the Constitution or laws of
the United States;
(ii) the facts upon which the claim is predicated were
unknown to the petitioner and could not have been
ascertained by the exercise of due diligence; or
(iii) the right asserted is a constitutional right that
was recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States
or the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania after the time period
provided in this section and has been held by that court to
apply retroactively.
(2) Any petition invoking an exception provided in
paragraph (1) shall be filed within 60 days of the date the claim
could have been presented.
42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b).
When an appellant files a facially untimely petition under the PCRA,
and fails to plead and prove one or more of the exceptions to the PCRA’s
one-year jurisdictional time limit, the petition is untimely and we must deny
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the appellant relief. Gamboa-Taylor, 753 A.2d at 783. Moreover, as
reflected in the plain language of section 9545, even when one of the
exceptions may apply to a given petition, it will excuse the untimeliness only
if the petition was filed within sixty days of the date that the conditions
underlying the exception came to light. Id. at 784.
Coffield’s brief contains no statement of the questions involved, as
required by Pa.R.A.P. 2116. In lieu of such a statement, we accept as
exhausting all issues properly argued the following statement that introduces
the argument section of Coffield’s brief:
Coffield’s case, at this point, is about three things: (1) trial
counsel’s objectively unreasonable advice to Coffield to reject
the Commonwealth’s 7 1/2 to 15[-]year plea deal and appellate
counsel’s objectively unreasonable decision not to challenge trial
counsel’s decision-making on direct appeal; (2) initial-review
PCRA counsel’s pathetic representation of Coffield and his
inexcusable abandonment of Coffield once the PCRA court
dismissed his first (timely) PCRA petition; and (3) the
recognition that, in order for PCRA petitioners to have a fair
opportunity to vindicate their Sixth Amendment right to effective
trial counsel and Due Process right to effective appellate counsel,
this Court must raise the bar as to what’s expected from initial-
review PCRA counsel.
Brief for Coffield at 23. Coffield admits the untimeliness of his petition and
that none of the subsection 9545(b) exceptions apply to rectify that
jurisdictional flaw. See Brief for Coffield at 20-21; P.C.O. at 6 (“Here,
[Coffield] concedes that his petition is untimely, and at the hearings below,
admitted that no exception applies.” (emphasis in original)).
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In an effort to avoid the consequences of this untimeliness, Coffield
frames what he styles an as-applied challenge to the constitutionality of the
PCRA’s one-year time limit under the circumstances of this case:
Coffield’s third PCRA petition is untimely, but the PCRA’s one-
year limitations period and exceptions to the limitations period
are not applicable because his initial-review PCRA proceedings
were fundamentally unfair[,] violating his state and federal
constitutional right to a fundamentally fair PCRA proceeding and
effective assistance of initial-review PCRA counsel.
First, Coffield’s first PCRA petition was timely and, although
inartfully pled, it contained the meritorious trial and appellate
counsel ineffectiveness claims discussed supra. It also contained
other claims requiring investigation . . . .
Second, although initial-review PCRA counsel, Steve Laver, filed
an amended petition, the amended petition simply restated,
nearly verbatim, the claims Coffield raised in his pro se petition;
in other words, Laver did not (1) thoroughly or meaningfully
“explore” the legal issues raised by Coffield, (2) attempt to
develop facts to meaningfully and adequately determine the
merits of Coffield’s legal claims, or (3) coherently present, in a
persuasive narrative, the facts supporting Coffield’s legal claims.
Third, after the PCRA court dismissed Coffield’s first timely
petition, Laver abandoned Coffield and did not perfect his
appeal; likewise, Laver never filed a formal motion to
withdraw . . . .
Brief for Coffield at 30-31.
In support of his “as applied” constitutional challenge, Coffield relies
upon Commonwealth v. Bennett, 930 A.2d 1264, 1273 (Pa. 2007), and
Commonwealth v. Brown, 943 A.2d 264 (Pa. 2008). However, neither
Bennett nor Brown is of any benefit to Coffield’s argument. In Bennett,
our Supreme Court recognized that counsel constructively abandons a
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defendant when he fails to file a requested appeal, and that such
abandonment is per se prejudicial for purposes of evaluating the
constitutional effectiveness of counsel. See 930 A.2d at 1273. Critically,
though, the Court’s grant of relief in Bennett depended in part on what it
found to be Bennett’s diligence under the circumstances of that case; the
Court emphasized that a petitioner bears the burden of establishing “that the
[after-discovered] facts were ‘unknown’ to him and that he could not
uncover them with the exercise of ‘due diligence.’” Id. at 1274. Thus,
Bennett did not suggest that circumstances such as those presented in this
case somehow relieved the petitioner of the PCRA’s strictures generally.
Coffield cites Brown for the general proposition that our Supreme
Court “has recognized the potential availability of an as-applied
constitutional challenge to the application of the PCRA’s time restriction.”
See Brown, 943 A.2d at 268 n.4 (citing Bennett, supra; Commonwealth
v. Abu-Salaam, 812 A.2d 497, 501 (Pa. 2002)). However, the Brown
Court did not address the application of that principle to the case then at bar
because the petitioner had failed to present any argument to that effect. Id.In Abu-Salaam, the Court did not grant relief on such an as-applied
constitutional challenge outside the PCRA’s requirements. Reinforcing this
fact, the Court expressly based its lengthy analysis upon the new
constitutional rule exception to the PCRA rather than leaving the confines of
the PCRA entirely for purposes of the constitutional argument presented.
812 A.2d at 499-502. As in Bennett and Brown, nothing in Abu-Salaam
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established any basis for evaluating the constitutional claims raised therein
without regard for the PCRA’s jurisdictional requirements.
Later in his brief, Coffield mounts an impressive recitation of general
constitutional requirements for the performance of trial, appellate, and
collateral relief counsel. Brief for Coffield at 31-34. None of these cases
vitiates the application of the PCRA generally or of the due diligence
requirement specifically to establish an entitlement to relief based upon a
facially untimely petition pursuant to the after-discovered fact exception.
Furthermore, Coffield offers no nexus between the principles articulated in
the many federal and Pennsylvania precedents he cites and the facts of his
case to establish that this case falls outside the ambit of the PCRA and is
excused from the jurisdictional requirements associated with Pennsylvania’s
framework for collateral relief under the PCRA.
In circumstances materially similar to those presented in the instant
case, this Court held that the petitioner is not relieved of the obligation to
plead the alleged violation within sixty days of its discovery, as required
generally by PCRA subsection 9545(b)(2):
In his counseled PCRA petition, Appellant sought an equitable
exception to the time-bar based upon prior appeal counsel’s
failure to file an appellate brief. Specifically, Appellant
contended that he asked his attorney to file an appellate brief
from the denial of his first PCRA petition, the attorney assured
him he would file the brief, the attorney did not file the brief,
and thereafter, this Court dismissed Appellant’s appeal. In
Bennett, supra, the Supreme Court recently held that such a
claim falls within the ambit of Subsection 9545(b)(1)(ii)’s
exception [i.e., after-discovered facts] since “the facts upon
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which the claim is predicated could not have been ascertained by
the exercise of due diligence.” However, in Bennett, the
Supreme Court also reiterated that, before a petitioner may
benefit from Subsection 9545(b)(1)(ii)’s exception, the petitioner
must plead [that] he filed his PCRA petition within sixty days of
the date it could have been presented; that is, he must plead
[that] he filed the petition within sixty days of when he
discovered this Court dismissed his first PCRA appeal. Id.
at 1272 n.11.
Commonwealth v. Geer, 936 A.2d 1075, 1077-78 (Pa. Super. 2007)
(citations modified; footnotes omitted). In Geer, because the appellant did
not allege that he presented his claim within sixty days of when he
discovered it, we found that he did not qualify for the after-discovered fact
exception. Consequently, the petition was untimely and no relief was due.
Here, Coffield simply does not plead that he filed his third PCRA
petition within sixty days of discovering that first PCRA counsel improperly
failed to file a requested appeal, nor could he do so credibly. The PCRA
court denied Coffield’s first PCRA petition on September 18, 2001. Coffield
filed his third petition nearly ten years later, on July 7, 2011. Even if there
was no intervening procedural history, it would entirely beggar belief that he
did not learn until over nine years after the denial of his first PCRA petition
that counsel had failed to file a requested appeal from the denial of that
petition. Moreover, on February 4, 2002, in the interim, Coffield filed a
second PCRA petition. Therein, he expressly raised the issue of first PCRA
counsel’s failure to file an appeal. See, e.g., Response to Notice of Intent to
Dismiss Under Pa.R.Crim.P. 907 or Alternatively, Amended Post-Conviction
Petition with Consolidated Memorandum of Law, 1/21/2003, at 3 ¶¶11-13.
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Thus, Coffield plainly was aware of that alleged failure in early 2002, if not
much earlier. Consequently, he does not qualify for the after-discovered fact
exception to the PCRA’s timeliness requirements, and the PCRA court
correctly concluded that it lacked jurisdiction over the instant petition.
Order affirmed.
Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 3/9/2015
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