Com. v. Reid, A. ( 2019 )

J-S64039-18 & J-S64040-18
NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
Appellant :
:
v. :
:
:
ANTHONY REID : No. 1925 EDA 2017
Appeal from the PCRA Order May 19, 2017
in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County,
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-51-CR-0700081-1989
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
v. :
:
:
ANTHONY REID :
:
Appellant : No. 1928 EDA 2017
Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence January 21, 1993
in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County,
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-51-CR-0700081-1989
BEFORE: BOWES, J., OLSON, J., and KUNSELMAN, J.
MEMORANDUM BY BOWES, J.: FILED FEBRUARY 07, 2019
In these consolidated appeals, Anthony Reid appeals from his 1993
judgment of sentence following the grant of Post Conviction Relief Act
(“PCRA”) relief, and the Commonwealth appeals from the order that granted
Reid PCRA relief. We reverse the PCRA order at issue in the Commonwealth’s
appeal, and quash as untimely Reid’s appeal from his judgment of sentence.
J-S64039-18 & J-S64040-18
In 1990, Reid was convicted for the murder of Neil Wilkerson and
sentenced to life imprisonment.1 This Court affirmed Reid’s judgment of
sentence in 1993, and our Supreme Court denied his petition for allowance of
appeal in 1994. Commonwealth v. Reid, 638 A.2d 270 (Pa.Super. 1993)
(unpublished memorandum), appeal denied, 644 A.2d 734 (Pa. 1994). Reid’s
first and second PCRA petitions resulted in no relief. Commonwealth v.
Reid, 832 A.2d 542 (Pa.Super. 2003) (unpublished memorandum), appeal
denied, 845 A.2d 817 (Pa. 2004); Commonwealth v. Reid, 903 A.2d 51(Pa.Super. 2006) (unpublished memorandum).
Reid filed a third PCRA petition on August 8, 2016. Therein he claimed,
based upon the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Williams v.
Pennsylvania, 136 S. Ct. 1899 (2016), that his due process rights were
violated because former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Castille
participated in the decision to deny Reid’s petition for allowance of appeal
although he previously had personal involvement in Reid’s case when he was
the District Attorney of Philadelphia County. PCRA Petition, 8/8/16, at 12.
The PCRA court granted Reid’s petition in part, directing that Reid’s “direct
appellate rights are hereby reinstated nunc pro tunc[.]” Order, 5/19/17. The
order further provided that Reid had thirty days to file a notice of appeal to
this Court. Id.____________________________________________
1Reid was sentenced to death for the 1988 murder of Mark Lisby in a separate
case. Commonwealth v. Reid, 642 A.2d 453, 455 (Pa. 1994).
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Reid filed his notice of appeal on June 15, 2017, purporting to appeal
“from each and every aspect of his judgment of conviction and sentence of
life imprisonment without the possibility of parole[.]” Notice of Appeal,
6/15/17. On June 19, 2017, the Commonwealth filed an appeal from the order
granting Reid PCRA relief and a statement of errors complained of on appeal,
contending, inter alia, that the PCRA court lacked jurisdiction to consider the
merits of Reid’s PCRA petition.
In Reid’s brief in support of his appeal, Reid presents four questions
raising challenges to evidentiary rulings made at trial and prosecutorial
misconduct. Reid’s brief at 1. The Commonwealth counters that the PCRA
court did not grant Reid the right to file a new direct appeal to this Court as
opposed to a new petition for allowance of appeal to our Supreme Court, and,
if it did, it was improperly granted. Commonwealth’s brief at 4.
We first determine whether the PCRA court had jurisdiction to grant Reid
PCRA relief. We may consider issues of jurisdiction sua sponte, even when
not addressed by the parties or the PCRA court. See, e.g., Commonwealth
v. Callahan, 101 A.3d 118, 121 (Pa.Super. 2014).
Courts lack jurisdiction to rule upon the merits of untimely PCRA
petitions. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Lewis, 63 A.3d 1274, 1280-81
(Pa.Super. 2013) (quoting Commonwealth v. Chester, 895 A.2d 520, 522
(Pa. 2006)) (“[I]f a PCRA petition is untimely, neither this Court nor the
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[PCRA] court has jurisdiction over the petition. Without jurisdiction, we simply
do not have the legal authority to address the substantive claims.”).
A petition for relief under the PCRA, including a second or subsequent
petition, must be filed within one year of the date the judgment of sentence
is final unless the petition alleges, and the petitioner proves, that an exception
to the time for filing the petition is met. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1). To invoke
a timeliness exception, the petitioner further must plead and prove that “he
filed his claims within 60 days of the date the claim could have been
presented.” Commonwealth v. Edmiston, 65 A.3d 339, 345 (Pa. 2013)
(citing 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(2)). “[T]his 60–day rule requires a petitioner to
plead and prove that the information on which his claims are based could not
have been obtained earlier despite the exercise of due diligence.” Id. at 346.
Appellant’s judgment of sentence became final in 1994, and the instant
PCRA petition was filed in 2016. Therein, Reid contended that his petition
satisfied the timeliness exceptions set forth in 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(i) and
(ii).2 Id.; PCRA Petition, 8/8/17, at 5-6. Specifically, he claimed that the
government interfered with his ability to present the claim previously by
mischaracterizing “District Attorney Castille’s role in capital prosecutions and
____________________________________________
2 Those exceptions apply if the petitioner raises the claim within sixty days of
the date the claim first could have been presented, and proves: (i) that
government officials interfered with his raising the claim previously; or (ii)
that the claim is based upon newly-discovered facts that could not have been
discovered earlier through the exercise of due diligence. 42 Pa.C.S.
§ 9545(b)(1)(i), (ii).
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through their failure to disclose documents and information reflecting his
actual role[.]” Id. at 5. Reid additionally contended that, “because the
Supreme Court recently ruled that those mischaracterizations are not credible,
the facts upon which this claim is predicated could not have been ascertained
earlier by the exercise of due diligence.” Id. Notably absent from Reid’s
allegations under either exception is any indication that he had inquired into
Justice Castille’s involvement in his case prior to the United States Supreme
Court’s decision in Williams, supra.
In Williams, the defendant was accused of committing murder in 1984,
and then-District Attorney Castille authorized the prosecutors to seek the
death penalty. Williams, supra at 1903. Williams was convicted and
sentenced to death. In the course of later PCRA proceedings based upon
allegations that the Commonwealth had suppressed exculpatory evidence
related to a witness’s undisclosed agreement with the prosecution to testify
against Williams, Williams obtained the prosecution’s file. The file contained
a memorandum evidencing District Attorney Castille’s death-penalty
authorization.3 Id. at 1904. The PCRA court granted relief in the form of a
new sentencing hearing.
____________________________________________
3 It is important to note that, because the discovery of information in the
prosecution’s file occurred during the pendency of a timely PCRA petition, that
information was not utilized by Williams to establish the PCRA court’s
jurisdiction.
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The Commonwealth filed an application to vacate the stay of execution
in our Supreme Court to which Justice Castille had been elected. Williams
responded with a motion asking Justice Castille to recuse himself based upon
his prior involvement in the case. Justice Castille refused to grant the motion
or to refer it to the full Court for decision. The Court ultimately vacated the
PCRA court’s order and reinstated Williams’s death sentence. Id. at 1904-05.
Williams appealed to the United States Supreme Court, claiming that his
due process rights were violated by Justice Castille’s adjudicating the petition
to overturn his sentence after having made the decision as District Attorney
to seek the death penalty. Id. at 1905. The High Court agreed with Williams,
holding that “Justice Castille’s significant, personal involvement in a critical
decision in Williams’s case gave rise to an unacceptable risk of actual bias.”
Id. at 1908.
The Williams case was decided on June 9, 2016. Reid filed the instant
PCRA petition exactly sixty days later. At the same time, Reid filed a motion
for discovery, citing Williams, and requesting disclosure of the types of
documents discussed in the Williams decision. The Commonwealth moved
to dismiss Reid’s petition, and attached to its motion a 1990 document
reflecting District Attorney Castille’s approval of the request of the Deputy
District Attorney of the Trial Division to seek the death penalty. Motion to
Dismiss, 3/30/17, at Exhibit A. Reid then, with leave of court, filed an
amended PCRA petition claiming that the newly-disclosed documents
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supported his claim that the information had been “suppressed by the
Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and by Mr. Castille for nearly three
decades, and that these facts were unknown to and not ascertainable by
[Reid] during that time, as they were in the exclusive control of the
Commonwealth and never previously disclosed to [Reid] or his counsel.”
Amended PCRA Petition, 5/19/17, at 3.
Thus, it is clear that Reid made mere bald assertions of suppression of
documents and the unascertainability of the facts underlying his claim without
any factual allegations to support them.4 Unquestionably, it was readily
ascertainable that former District Attorney Castille was on the Supreme Court
when it denied Reid’s petition for allowance of appeal in 1994. Further, in his
PCRA petition, Reid supports allegations of Justice Castille’s pride in his record
as the District Attorney of Philadelphia and his “enthusiasm for capital
punishment” with citations to numerous 1993 newspaper articles. PCRA
Petition, 8/8/16, at 13 n.1. Hence, Reid’s petition demonstrates that he had
reason to inquire into a potential conflict presented by Justice Castille’s
involvement in deciding whether to entertain discretionary review at the time
it was decided. Yet, nowhere in his petition or amended petition did Reid claim
that he had at any point prior to the filing of his 2016 PCRA petition requested
____________________________________________
4Of course, the Williams decision itself cannot be used by Reid to satisfy the
newly-discovered-facts timeliness exception. See Commonwealth v.
Watts, 23 A.3d 980, 987 (Pa. 2011) (“[S]ubsequent decisional law does not
amount to a new ‘fact’ under section 9545(b)(1)(ii) of the PCRA.”).
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the documents that the Commonwealth produced when he finally did ask, or
identify any “mischaracterizations” of Justice Castille that operated to dupe
him in to declining to investigate any conflict.
Our Supreme Court has “repeatedly stated it is the appellant’s burden
to allege and prove that one of the timeliness exceptions applies.” Edmiston,
supra at 346. To do so, he must plead and prove that “he filed his claims
within 60 days of the date the claim could have been presented.” Id. at 345.
Furthermore, as to newly-discovered facts, while “[d]ue diligence requires
neither perfect vigilance nor punctilious care,” it does require “reasonable
efforts by a petitioner, based on the particular circumstances, to uncover facts
that may support a claim for collateral relief.” Commonwealth v. Smith,
194 A.3d 126, 134 (Pa.Super. 2018) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Without averments of fact to even suggest that Reid made any efforts
in the twenty-plus years prior to the filing of his petition to ascertain Justice
Castille’s potential conflict of interest due to his involvement in his case, let
alone allegations that such attempts were thwarted by governmental
interference, the PCRA court’s determination that Reid satisfied a PCRA
timeliness exception is unsupported by the record. As such, the PCRA court
lacked jurisdiction to grant Reid relief in the form of partial reinstatement of
his direct-appeal rights. Accordingly, we reverse the PCRA court’s May 19,
2017 order granting Reid PCRA relief. Accord Commonwealth v. Brown,
111 A.3d 171, 178 (Pa.Super. 2015) (holding due diligence was not shown
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where the petitioner had reason to suspect that Commonwealth witness who
testified at trial had additional information about the crime, but the petitioner
failed to elicit the information at trial and did not allege that he made attempts
to contact the witness at any point after trial; thus, new information supplied
sua sponte by the witness could not satisfy the newly-discovered facts
timeliness exception).
It follows that, in the absence of a valid reinstatement of Reid’s direct
appeal rights, his appeal from his 1993 judgment of sentence is untimely and
must be quashed. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 720(A) (providing notice of appeal from
judgment of sentence must be filed within thirty days of the imposition of
sentence or the denial of a timely post-sentence motion).
Order reversed in appeal at 1925 EDA 2017. Appeal at 1928 EDA 2017
quashed. Jurisdiction relinquished.
Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 2/7/19
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