Com. v. Butler, C. ( 2017 )

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NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37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.
CLARENCE LAMONT BUTLER
Appellant No. 597 WDA 2016
Appeal from the PCRA Order March 1, 2016
In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-02-CR-0015888-2004
BEFORE: GANTMAN, P.J., MOULTON, J., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*
MEMORANDUM BY MOULTON, J.: FILED MARCH 28, 2017
Clarence Lamont Butler appeals from the March 1, 2016 order of the
Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas dismissing as untimely his petition
filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”), 42 Pa.C.S. §§
9541-9546. We affirm.
On December 12, 2005, a jury convicted Butler of second-degree
murder (18 Pa.C.S. § 2502(b)).1 On February 8, 2006, the trial court
sentenced him to life imprisonment.2 Butler did not file a post-sentence
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*
Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court.
1
At trial, Christopher Conrad (“trial counsel”) represented Butler.
2
At docket number CP-02-CR-0017235-2004, the same jury convicted
Butler of robbery-inflicts serious bodily injury (18 Pa.C.S. § 3701(a)(1)(i));
carrying a firearm without a license (18 Pa.C.S. § 6106(a)(1)); and criminal
conspiracy (18 Pa.C.S. § 903(a)(1)). The trial court sentenced him to 72 to
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motion or direct appeal. On July 10, 2006, following a PCRA petition, the
PCRA court reinstated Butler’s direct appeal rights nunc pro tunc. Butler
timely filed a notice of appeal to this Court on August 3, 2006. On August 7,
2007, we affirmed Butler’s judgment of sentence. Butler did not file a
petition for allowance of appeal with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
On October 19, 2007, Butler filed a timely PCRA petition, which the
trial court dismissed. Butler appealed to this Court, and we affirmed on
August 17, 2009.
Butler filed the instant PCRA petition, his second, on January 6, 2016.
On February 1, 2016, the PCRA court filed a notice of intent to dismiss
pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907(1). Butler timely objected, and the PCRA court
issued an order dismissing his petition on March 3, 2016. Butler timely filed
a notice of appeal. The PCRA court did not order Butler to file a
Pennsylvania Rule of Appellate Procedure 1925(b) statement and, on May 6,
2016, issued an opinion.
On appeal, Butler raises the following issues:
I. WHETHER THE TRIAL COURT ERRED BY DISMISSING
P.C.R.A. PETITION FOR NEWLY DISCOVERED
EVIDENCE AS UNTIMELY.
II. WHETHER NEWLY DISCOVERED EVIDENCE
PRESENTED WARRANT[ED] AN EVIDENTIARY
HEARING.
_______________________
(Footnote Continued)
144 months’ incarceration consecutive to his sentence of life imprisonment
in this case.
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III. WHETHER THE TRIAL/P.C.R.A. COURT AND THE
ALLEGHENY COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY WAS [sic]
AWARE OF CHRISTOPHER CONRAD’S CRIMINAL ACTS,
AND CONCEALED THESE CRIMINAL ACTS FROM
[BUTLER], AND ELECTED TO APPOINT MR. CONRAD
FOR REPRESENTATION FOR UNSEEN REASONS.
Butler’s Br. at 1.
Our review of an order denying PCRA relief is limited to determining
“whether the decision of the PCRA court is supported by the evidence of
record and is free of legal error.” Commonwealth v. Melendez–Negron,
123 A.3d 1087, 1090 (Pa.Super. 2015). We will not disturb the PCRA court’s
factual findings “unless there is no support for [those] findings in the
certified record.” Id. It is well settled that “the timeliness of a PCRA
petition is a jurisdictional requisite.” Commonwealth v. Brown, 111 A.3d
171, 175 (Pa.Super. 2015), app. denied, 125 A.3d 1197 (Pa. 2015). A PCRA
petition, “including a second or subsequent petition, shall be filed within one
year of the date the judgment becomes final.” 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1). A
judgment is final “at the conclusion of direct review, including discretionary
review in the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania, or at the expiration of time for seeking . . . review.” 42
Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(3).
Courts may consider a PCRA petition filed more than one year after a
judgment of sentence became final only if the petitioner alleges and proves
one of the following three statutory exceptions:
(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
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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.
42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(i)-(iii); see Brown, 111 A.3d at 175. In addition,
when invoking an exception to the PCRA time bar, the petition must “be filed
within 60 days of the date the claim could have been presented.” 42 Pa.C.S.
§ 9545(b)(2).
The trial court sentenced Butler on February 8, 2006. He appealed to
this Court, and we affirmed his judgment of sentence on August 7, 2007.
Butler did not seek allowance of appeal with the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court. Thus, Butler’s judgment of sentence became final 30 days later, on
September 6, 2007. Butler had one year from that date, or until September
8, 2008,3 to file a timely PCRA petition. His current petition, filed on January
6, 2016, is therefore facially untimely.
Butler’s petition remains untimely unless it alleges and proves a PCRA
time-bar exception. Butler claims he meets the “new facts” exception
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3
Butler had until Monday, September 8, 2008 to file a timely PCRA
petition. 1 Pa.C.S. § 1908 (when last day of time period “fall[s] on Saturday
or Sunday, . . . such day shall be omitted from the computation”).
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because he filed his petition within 60 days of learning that his trial counsel
had been convicted of driving under the influence (“DUI”) in 2004 and 2007
and that trial counsel’s law license had been suspended from 2012 to 2015.4
Butler must show that “the facts upon which the claim was predicated
were unknown” to him and “could not have been ascertained by the exercise
of due diligence.” 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(ii); Commonwealth v.
Bennett, 930 A.2d 1264, 1272 (Pa. 2007). This “new-facts” exception does
not require us to analyze the merits of the case or the underlying claim.
Brown, 111 A.3d at 177.
Butler alleges that he first learned of trial counsel’s DUIs on October
28, 2015, when he received a letter from Angelea Allen Mitas, Counsel-in-
Charge with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel (“ODC”). He claims that he
requested trial counsel’s disciplinary information after hearing rumors about
trial counsel’s DUI arrests. Butler further claims that this information was
unknown to him prior to this date and that he filed his PCRA petition within
60 days.5
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4
To the extent Butler claims trial counsel’s law-license suspension
constitutes a “new fact,” we reject this argument. He alleges that trial
counsel’s license was suspended from 2012 to 2015, which was well after
Butler’s 2005 trial.
5
Butler claims that he delivered his PCRA petition to the prison staff
for mailing on December 27, 2015, which he argues would fall within the 60
days in which he had to bring his claim. The docket indicates the petition
was filed on January 6, 2016. See Docket Entry No. 57. While there is no
date on Butler’s petition and no dated envelope in the certified record, we
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Butler relies on Commonwealth v. Burton, 121 A.3d 1063(Pa.Super. 2015), app. granted, 134 A.3d 446 (Pa. 2016), for his “new
facts” claim. In Burton, the appellant was convicted of first-degree murder
and conspiracy to commit murder in September 1993. Id. at 1066.
Appellant filed a PCRA petition claiming the “new-facts” exception on July
11, 2013, after receiving a letter from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project
on May 30, 2013. Id. Enclosed with the letter was a copy of a motion to
expunge filed by a co-defendant, wherein the co-defendant admitted to
killing the victim in self-defense and alleged that an innocent man had gone
to jail for a crime that the co-defendant had committed. Id. The PCRA
court dismissed the petition without a hearing. Id. at 1067.
On appeal, this Court vacated the PCRA court’s order and remanded
the case for an evidentiary hearing. Id. at 1066. In doing so, we concluded
“that due diligence requires neither perfect vigilance nor punctilious care,
but rather it requires reasonable efforts by a petitioner, based on the
particular circumstances, to uncover facts that may support a claim for
collateral relief.” Id. at 1071. We explained that while the general rule is
“that publicly available information cannot predicate a timeliness exception,
_______________________
(Footnote Continued)
will assume he submitted the petition to prisoner staff on December 27,
2015 because the Commonwealth does not object to this claim in its brief.
See Commonwealth v. Chambers, 35 A.3d 34, 39 (Pa.Super. 2011)
(“[T]he prisoner mailbox rule provides that a pro se prisoner's document is
deemed filed on the date he delivers it to prison authorities for mailing.”).
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beyond the 60-day grace period,” id., “a pro se petitioner does not have
access to information otherwise readily available to the public,” id. at 1072.6
Furthermore, we stated that the PCRA court could not make credibility
determinations as to when the appellant had learned of the co-defendant’s
filings without an evidentiary hearing. Id. at 1073-74.
Here, Butler has pled that the “new facts” regarding his trial counsel
were unknown to him before his receipt of the ODC’s October 28, 2015
letter. The Commonwealth argues that Butler was aware of the “new facts”
earlier, when he sent his letter to ODC requesting information about trial
counsel. However, Butler alleges that he had only heard rumors at that
point. After hearing those rumors, he exercised reasonable diligence in
writing to the ODC to determine whether the rumors were substantiated. As
we stated in Burton, “due diligence requires neither perfect vigilance nor
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6
In holding that there is no presumption that a pro se petitioner has
access to public information, we clarified that
[a]n untimely petitioner’s pro se status merely eliminates
the presumption of his access to public information. The
Commonwealth is free, of course, to adduce evidence
sufficient to establish such access. When it does, a PCRA
court can engage in a real, fact-based inquiry. A finding of
access may well preclude a petitioner from invoking the
after-discovered facts exception to the PCRA timeliness
requirement (just as the general public records rule works
where the petitioner is represented by counsel).
Burton, 121 A.3d. at 1073 n.7.
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punctilious care, but rather it requires reasonable efforts by a petitioner.”
121 A.3d at 1071. After learning of trial counsel’s DUIs on October 28,
2015, Butler filed his PCRA petition within 60 days. As in Burton, we will
not presume that Butler, who is a pro se petitioner, had access to this
publicly available information.
Although Butler has satisfied the “new facts” exception to the PCRA’s
time bar, we conclude that his underlying ineffective assistance of counsel
claim fails. Butler claims that because trial counsel had been convicted of a
DUI conviction before Butler’s trial in 2005, trial counsel had alcoholism
problems and added stress at the time of Butler’s trial and, therefore,
rendered ineffective assistance of counsel. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9543(a)(2)(ii).
It is well-settled that “counsel is presumed to have rendered effective
assistance.” Commonwealth v. Lesko, 15 A.3d 345, 374 (Pa. 2011). To
succeed on an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, Butler has the burden
of establishing:
(1) the underlying claim has arguable merit; (2) no
reasonable basis existed for counsel’s actions or failure to
act; and (3) petitioner suffered prejudice as a result of
counsel’s error such that there is a reasonable probability
that the result of the proceeding would have been different
absent such error.
Id. at 373.
Butler has failed to suggest how trial counsel’s alleged drinking issues
rendered his assistance ineffective. See Commonwealth v. Burton, 417
A.2d 611, 614 (Pa. 1980) (holding there was no indication appellant’s trial
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counsel rendered ineffective assistance because he had been drinking before
appearing in court); see also Commonwealth v. McCloy, 574 A.2d 87, 91
(Pa.Super. 1990) (holding that “defense counsel’s personal, legal troubles
are unrelated to those of the client whom he is representing” and ”there is
no per se rule which commands that counsel be deemed constitutionally
ineffective”). In McCloy, we held that “in order to be entitled to relief from
a conviction . . . the defendant must affirmatively show that his right to a
fair trial was prejudiced by his counsel's representation.” 574 A.2d at 91.
Butler does not allege any actions or inactions of trial counsel that could
arguably be perceived as ineffective. Furthermore, Butler has not
established how the outcome of the trial would have been different had
counsel not had a DUI conviction.
Because we conclude that Butler’s ineffectiveness claim fails, we need
not address his remaining issues.
Order affirmed.
President Judge Emeritus Stevens joins the memorandum.
President Judge Gantman concurs in the result.
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Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 3/28/2017
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