Com. v. Watson, J. ( 2023 )

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NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
:
v. :
:
:
JEFFREY WATSON :
:
Appellant : No. 402 EDA 2023
Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered February 3, 2023
In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at
No(s): CP-51-CR-0439251-1985
BEFORE: BOWES, J., NICHOLS, J., and KING, J.
MEMORANDUM BY BOWES, J.: FILED NOVEMBER 1, 2023
Jeffrey Watson appeals pro se from the order dismissing as untimely his
subsequent petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”).
We vacate and remand for further proceedings.
This case stems from a 1985 bar stabbing whereby Appellant killed an
individual and was charged with, inter alia, three types of homicide: first-
degree murder, third-degree murder, and voluntary manslaughter. A jury
convicted him of first-degree murder, possessing instruments of crime, and
aggravated assault. See Verdict Sheet, 1/9/86 (indicating “guilty of murder
in the first degree” as the verdict for Appellant’s general homicide charge).
After unsuccessfully pursuing relief on direct appeal, his judgment of sentence
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of life imprisonment became final in 1988. Subsequently, he sought relief
through multiple PCRA proceedings, once again to no avail.1
On July 22, 2020, Appellant received a sentence status summary from
the Department of Corrections (“DOC”) indicating for the first time that he had
also been convicted of voluntary manslaughter. Appellant contacted the DOC
and the Philadelphia clerk of courts to correct this error. In December of 2020,
the clerk of courts furnished Appellant with a docket that referenced a guilty
verdict for voluntary manslaughter and merger with his first-degree murder
conviction for sentencing purposes. All prior versions of Appellant’s docket
had reflected a not guilty verdict for voluntary manslaughter.
Appellant pro se filed the instant PCRA petition on November 30, 2021.
Arguing that the trial court had recognized that the victim had provoked
Appellant, he suggested that he should only be sentenced on the voluntary
manslaughter charge instead of first-degree murder. On December 19, 2022,
the PCRA court filed notice of its intent to dismiss Appellant’s petition pursuant
to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907, because it concluded that the petition was untimely.
Appellant responded, alleging his petition was timely because he had filed it
within one year of learning about the docket entry evidencing the voluntary
manslaughter conviction and merger.
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1 We note that since the case file for this matter is missing, we are limited to
the reconstructed record and prior memoranda from this Court. Although
limited, this circumstance does not hamper our review.
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Before the PCRA court considered Appellant’s response, he filed the
instant appeal.2 Thereafter, the PCRA court dismissed Appellant’s PCRA
petition as untimely.3 Both Appellant and the PCRA court complied with
Pa.R.A.P. 1925. Appellant presents a single issue for our review:
Whether or not the lower court erred in denying [Appellant’s] post
conviction relief based on timeliness of appeal, since the facts
presented were unknown to [Appellant]. [Appellant] was kept
unaware that an additional charge was included in his docket since
sentencing, but this information was not made available to the
defendant until such a time that was less than one year from the
time of [Appellant’s] filing for post conviction relief. Can
[Appellant] legally receive and maintain two different charges for
the same offense, or can this illegal sentence be allowed to
continue? One entry recognizes the lack of premeditation that is
the foundation of the other entry. Since there is one homicide,
not two, how can two homicide charges, even when “merged”, be
allowed to coexist?
Appellant’s brief at 4 (cleaned up).
Prior to reaching the underlying merits of Appellant’s PCRA claim, we
must first determine whether his petition was timely filed, as neither this Court
nor the PCRA court has jurisdiction over an untimely PCRA petition. See
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2 Since the notice of appeal was filed before the entry of a final order on the
docket, this Court issued an order directing Appellant to show cause as to why
the appeal should not be quashed. We subsequently discharged the order and
referred the matter to this panel. Upon review, “[a]lthough initially premature
when filed, we need not quash Appellant’s appeal” as the PCRA court
thereafter dismissed the petition. Commonwealth v. Swartzfager, 59 A.3d
616, 618 (Pa.Super. 2012) (citing Pa.R.A.P. 905(a)(5) (“A notice of appeal
filed after the announcement of a determination but before the entry of an
appealable order shall be treated as filed after such entry and on the day
thereof”)). The docket has been corrected to reflect that the appeal properly
lies from the final order entered on February 3, 2023.
3 Appellant filed a second notice of appeal following the entry of the final order.
We dismissed that appeal as duplicative of the instant appeal.
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Commonwealth v. Woolstrum, 271 A.3d 512, 513-14 (Pa.Super. 2022).
To be considered timely, a PCRA petition must be filed within one year of when
the petitioner’s judgment of sentence becomes final. See 42 Pa.C.S.
§ 9545(b)(1). As Appellant’s judgment of sentence became final in 1988, his
2021 petition is facially untimely. Therefore, Appellant needed to plead and
prove one of the timeliness exceptions set forth in § 9545(b)(1)(i-iii), within
one year of the date of when the claim could have been presented. See 42
Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(2).
Appellant did not explicitly address the PCRA’s time-bar in his PCRA
petition, but did plead facts demonstrating that he filed the petition within one
year of learning about the new docket entry.4 Moreover, he expressly invoked
the newly-discovered fact exception in his response to the PCRA court’s Rule
907 notice. Thus, Appellant raised the exception within the PCRA proceedings
below, and we will consider whether Appellant has successfully proven that
exception. Accord Commonwealth v. Burton, 936 A.2d 521, 525
(Pa.Super. 2007) (holding that “exceptions to the time bar must be pled in
the PCRA petition, and may not be raised for the first time on appeal”).
Our Court has held as follows with regard to the newly-discovered fact
exception:
The newly-discovered facts exception set forth in
[§] 9545(b)(1)(ii) requires a petitioner to demonstrate he did not
know the facts upon which he based his petition and could not
____________________________________________
4 We observe that the form petition Appellant filled out did not include any
prompts regarding the timeliness exceptions.
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have learned those facts earlier by the exercise of due diligence.
Additionally, the focus of this exception is on the newly discovered
facts, not on a newly discovered or newly willing source for
previously known facts.
As an initial jurisdictional threshold, [§] 9545(b)(1)(ii) requires a
petitioner to allege and prove that there were facts unknown to
him and that he exercised due diligence in discovering those facts.
Once jurisdiction is established, a PCRA petitioner can present a
substantive after-discovered-evidence claim.
Thus, the “new facts” exception at [§] 9545(b)(1)(ii) does not
require any merits analysis of an underlying after-discovered-
evidence claim.
Commonwealth v. Reeves, 296 A.3d 1228, 1232 (Pa.Super. 2023) (cleaned
up).
Appellant alleged that he learned of the new fact, that the docket was
changed to reflect a finding of guilt at the voluntary manslaughter charge, on
December 30, 2020, when the Philadelphia clerk of courts responded to his
inquiry and provided him with the new docket. While the Commonwealth is
correct that Appellant first learned something was amiss on July 22, 2020,
when he received the summary from the DOC, he did not know that the docket
itself had been changed until December. Appellant could not have learned
this fact earlier by the exercise of due diligence because it would be impossible
to anticipate the docketing mistake. Moreover, he promptly inquired about
the error on his DOC sentence summary shortly after receiving it. Thus, we
determine that Appellant’s November 2021 petition was filed within one year
of the date the claim could have been presented pursuant to § 9545(b)(2),
and the PCRA court erred in dismissing the petition as untimely.
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Turning to the merits of Appellant’s claim, we cannot agree with
Appellant’s contention that his culpability for the underlying homicide should
be characterized solely as voluntary manslaughter. See Appellant’s brief at
13. It is apparent from the reconstructed record that the jury convicted
Appellant of first-degree murder, not voluntary manslaughter. Therefore, he
is entitled to have the docket corrected to reflect the proper homicide
conviction and sentence. Indeed, even the Commonwealth agrees that
Appellant is entitled to have the docket corrected in that regard. See
Commonwealth’s brief at 8. Accordingly, we vacate the order dismissing
Appellant’s PCRA petition and remand for further proceedings to correct the
patent error on Appellant’s docket.
Order vacated. Case remanded for further proceedings. Jurisdiction
relinquished.
Date: 11/01/2023
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