Com. v. Williams, N., Jr.

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NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
:
v. :
:
:
NORMAN WILLIAMS, JR. :
:
Appellant : No. 1749 MDA 2022
Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered November 16, 2022
In the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin County
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-22-CR-0001173-2004
BEFORE: BENDER, P.J.E., BOWES, J., and SULLIVAN, J.
MEMORANDUM BY SULLIVAN, J.: FILED: NOVEMBER 28, 2023
Norman Williams, Jr. (“Williams”) appeals from the order denying his
serial petition for relief filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act
(“PCRA”).1 We affirm.
In 2005, a jury found Williams guilty of second-degree murder and
criminal conspiracy. The trial court sentenced Williams to a term of life
imprisonment without the possibility of parole for second-degree murder and
a concurrent term of twelve to twenty-four years in prison for conspiracy. This
Court affirmed the judgment of sentence, and our Supreme Court denied
allowance of appeal on September 26, 2006. See Commonwealth v.
Williams, 898 A.2d 1136 (Pa. Super. 2006) (unpublished memorandum),
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1 See 42 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546.
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appeal denied, 907 A.2d 1102 (Pa. 2006). Williams did not seek further review
in the United States Supreme Court.
Williams filed a pro se PCRA petition in January 2007. In connection with
that filing, the following events took place:
The PCRA court appointed counsel, who filed an amended
PCRA petition on April 3, 2007. Appointed counsel filed a motion
to withdraw on July 23, 2007. The PCRA court granted counsel’s
motion and issued notice of its intent to dismiss the PCRA petition
without a hearing pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907. On August 24,
2007, the PCRA court dismissed [Williams’s] petition[,] and [he]
filed a notice of appeal on September 27, 2007. On July 17, 2009,
this Court remanded the matter to determine whether [Williams]
had filed a timely notice of appeal from the denial of PCRA relief.
See Commonwealth v. Williams, . . . 979 A.2d 838 (Pa. Super.
2009) (unpublished memorandum). On September 2, 2009, the
PCRA court concluded that [Williams] had filed a timely appeal
from the dismissal of his PCRA petition. Nevertheless, on
November 9, 2009, this Court vacated the July 26, 2007 order and
remanded the matter, determining that counsel failed to satisfy
the technical prerequisites of [Commonwealth v. Turner, 544
A.2d 927 (Pa. 1988), and Commonwealth v. Finley, 550 A.2d
213 (Pa. Super. 1988) (en banc)], and thus the PCRA court erred
by granting counsel’s request to withdraw. See Commonwealth
v. Williams, 988 A.2d 732 (Pa. Super. 2009) (unpublished
memorandum).
Upon remand, [Williams] filed a pro se motion for leave to
amend his original PCRA petition. On December 9, 2010, the
PCRA court appointed new counsel and granted [Williams] leave
to amend his PCRA petition. [Williams] filed a counseled,
supplemental PCRA petition on July 7, 2011.
Commonwealth v. Williams, 178 A.3d 139 (Pa. Super. 2017) (unpublished
memorandum), appeal denied, 183 A.3d 351 (Pa. 2018). Following a further
protracted procedural history in which multiple replacement PCRA counsel
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were appointed, this Court affirmed the denial of Williams’s first PCRA petition,
and our Supreme Court denied allowance of appeal. Id.In January 2019, Williams filed a second pro se PCRA petition in which
he asserted governmental interference by the PCRA court as an exception to
the PCRA’s one-year time bar, as well as governmental interference by certain
PCRA counsel in failing to raise the issue of the PCRA court’s interference. The
PCRA court denied the petition as untimely. This Court affirmed the denial of
Williams’s second PCRA petition, and our Supreme Court denied allowance of
appeal. See Commonwealth v. Williams, 237 A.3d 1064 (Pa. Super. 2020)
(unpublished memorandum), appeal denied, 242 A.3d 1246 (Pa. 2020).
On October 17, 2022, Williams filed the instant pro se PCRA petition, his
third. On November 16, 2022, the PCRA court entered an order dismissing
the petition. In so doing, the PCRA court determined that Williams’s petition
was untimely and that he failed to plead a valid exception to the one-year
time bar for filing a PCRA petition. Williams filed a timely notice of appeal,
and both he and the PCRA court complied with Pa.R.A.P. 1925.2
Williams raises the following issues for our review:
1. WHETHER THE PCRA COURT ERRED IN DISMISSING
[WILLIAMS’S] SUBSEQUENT PCRA PETITION ON GROUNDS
THAT IT WAS UNTIMELY FILED?
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2 In lieu of authoring an opinion pursuant to Rule 1925(a), the PCRA court
directed this Court to its November 16, 2022 order as the place in the record
where the reasons for its denial of PCRA relief may be found. See Pa.R.A.P.
1925(a)(1).
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2. WHETHER THE DECISION IN COMMONWEALTH V.
BRADLEY, 261 A.3d 381 ([Pa.] 2021)[,] HAS ALL THE
CHARACTERISTICS OF OF [sic] A NEW SUBSTANTIVE RULE OF
LAW, AND IN THE INTEREST OF JUSTICE, SHOULD IT BE
INTERPRETED AS SUCH?
3. WHETHER BEFORE THE DECISION IN . . . BRADLEY . . .
CORRECTED THE FLAWS IN PCRA PROCEDURE GOVERNING
INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF PCRA COUNSEL CLAIMS,
WAS/IS THERE ANY OTHER MEANS FOR [WILLIAMS] TO
PRESENT HIS CLAIM OF INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF PCRA
COUNSEL?
Williams’s Brief at unnumbered 3 (capitalization in original).
Our standard of review of an order dismissing a PCRA petition is well-
settled:
We review an order dismissing a petition under the PCRA in
the light most favorable to the prevailing party at the PCRA level.
This review is limited to the findings of the PCRA court and the
evidence of record. We will not disturb a PCRA court’s ruling if it
is supported by evidence of record and is free of legal error. This
Court may affirm a PCRA court’s decision on any grounds if the
record supports it. Further, we grant great deference to the
factual findings of the PCRA court and will not disturb those
findings unless they have no support in the record. However, we
afford no such deference to its legal conclusions. Where the
petitioner raises questions of law, our standard of review is de
novo and our scope of review plenary.
Commonwealth v. Ford, 44 A.3d 1190, 1194 (Pa. Super. 2012) (citations
omitted).
Under the PCRA, any petition including a second or subsequent petition
must be filed within one year of the date on which the judgment of sentence
becomes final. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1). A judgment of sentence
becomes final at the conclusion of direct review, including discretionary review
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in the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania, or at the expiration of time for seeking the review. See 42
Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(3). The PCRA’s timeliness requirements are jurisdictional
in nature, and a court may not address the merits of the issues raised if the
PCRA petition was not timely filed. See Commonwealth v. Albrecht, 994
A.2d 1091, 1093 (Pa. 2010).
In the instant matter, Williams’s judgment of sentence became final on
December 26, 2006,3 ninety days after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court
denied his petition for allowance of appeal and he declined to petition the
United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. See U.S.Sup.Ct.R. 13
(stating that an appellant must file petition for writ of certiorari with the United
States Supreme Court within ninety days after entry of judgment by a state
court of last resort). Thus, Williams had until December 26, 2007, to file a
timely PCRA petition. The instant petition, filed on October 17, 2022, was
filed nearly fifteen years after the judgment of sentence became final.
Therefore, the instant petition is facially untimely under the PCRA. See 42
Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(3).
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3 The ninetieth day fell on December 25, 2006; however, as that day was a
court holiday, Williams had until the next business day, December 26, 2006,
to file a petition for allowance of appeal. See 1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1908.
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Pennsylvania courts may consider an untimely PCRA petition if the
petitioner can plead and prove one of three exceptions set forth under 42
Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1), which provides:
(b) Time for filing petition.—
(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.
42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1). Any PCRA petition invoking one of these
exceptions “shall be filed within one year of the date the claim could have
been presented.” Id. § 9545(b)(2). If the petition is untimely and the
petitioner has not pleaded and proven a timeliness exception, the petition
must be dismissed without a hearing because Pennsylvania courts are without
jurisdiction to consider the merits of the petition. See Commonwealth v.
Taylor, 65 A.3d 462, 468 (Pa. Super. 2013).
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In his petition, Williams presented two issues for the PCRA court to
determine:
(A) Whether the recent Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decision
in . . . Bradley . . . establishes a new substantive rule of
constitutional law, which would make [Willams’s] otherwise
untimely PCRA petition invoke an exception to the PCRA
timebar under section 9545(b)(1)(iii)?
(B) Whether appointed PCRA counsel Jennifer Tobias, Esq.
rendered ineffective counsel, pursuant to the Supreme
Court of Pennsylvania holding in . . . Bradley . . . and
Strickland v. Washington, 104 S. Ct. 2052 (1984), by
failing to seek leave from the PCRA court and petition the
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to allow her to amend
[Williams’s ] first PCRA petition?
See Pro Se PCRA Petition, 10/18/22, at unnumbered 6 (unnecessary
capitalization omitted). In support of his claim, Williams averred that:
On April 03, 2007, appointed PCRA counsel, at the time,
amended [Williams’s] January 10, 2007 pro se PCRA petition
without raising a single additional issue of merit than what
[Williams] had previously raised himself. She done [sic] so with
the aid of [Williams’s] notes of testimony, which he did not have
to draw from, she then erroneously withdrew and abandoned him.
Id. (unnecessary capitalization omitted). Williams expressly acknowledged
that his petition was untimely; however, he attempted to invoke the timeliness
exception provided by section 9545(b)(1)(iii), which can potentially apply
when a newly recognized constitutional right has been held to apply
retroactively. Id. Although Williams’s arguments in the petition were sparse,
they suggest that he requested the PCRA court to determine that Bradley
should apply retroactively to permit the PCRA court to entertain his untimely
claim that Attorney Tobias was ineffective in amending Williams’s first pro se
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PCRA petition, and that she erroneously withdrew from representation and
abandoned him.
In his brief to this Court, Williams concedes that Bradley “does not
apply retroactively nor does it qualify as a new substantive rule of law.”
Williams’s Brief at unnumbered 7 (unnecessary capitalization omitted). He
nevertheless argues that “there is a clear question of law that, unanswered,
is depriving many U.S. citizens of their constitutional right to effect assistance
of counsel for their 1st PCRA petitions.” Id. (unnecessary capitalization
omitted).
Initially, we note that Williams’s arguments fail to address the elements
of the newly recognized constitutional right timeliness exception set forth at
section 9545(b)(1)(iii), and we may affirm on that basis alone. See Albrecht,
994 A.2d at 1094 (noting that the appellant bears the burden of establishing
that a PCRA timeliness exception applies).
In any event, Williams’s reliance on Bradley as a timeliness exception
is misplaced. As Williams concedes, the Bradley Court did not recognize a
new constitutional right, let alone one that was deemed to apply retroactively.
Rather, Bradley addressed the procedures for considering claims of
ineffective assistance of PCRA counsel on appeal in the same PCRA
proceeding, not a subsequent PCRA petition. See Bradley, 261 A.3d at 403-
04 (stating that the Court’s decision did not sanction “extra-statutory serial
petitions”).
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Thus, as the Bradley Court did not recognize a new constitutional right
or hold that its decision would apply retroactively in the manner Williams
asserts it should, we agree with the PCRA court that Bradley does not
constitute a timeliness exception under section 9545(b)(1)(iii) and that it
lacked jurisdiction to consider Williams’s third PCRA petition. See Albrecht,
994 A.2d at 1093.4 Accordingly, we affirm the order dismissing the petition.
Order affirmed.
Judgment Entered.
Benjamin D. Kohler, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 11/28/2023
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4 Notably, even if Williams had satisfied a timeliness exception, no relief would
have been due. Williams confined his present ineffectiveness claim to his
initial PCRA counsel, who filed an amended PCRA petition on January 10, 2007,
and was later permitted to withdraw by order of the PCRA court. As explained
above, this Court determined in a prior appeal that the PCRA court improperly
permitted initial PCRA counsel to withdraw, and upon remand, the PCRA court
appointed new PCRA counsel, granted Williams leave to amend his PCRA
petition, and Williams thereafter filed a counseled, supplemental PCRA petition
on July 7, 2011. See Williams, 178 A.3d 139 (unpublished memorandum at
*3). Therefore, even if initial PCRA counsel had been ineffective in amending
Williams’s pro se petition, Williams suffered no prejudice because the PCRA
court appointed replacement PCRA counsel who filed a supplemental petition
on Williams’s behalf.
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