Com. v. Torres Santiago, A.

J-S12012-22
NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
:
v. :
:
:
ARNALDO TORRES SANTIAGO :
:
Appellant : No. 516 EDA 2021
Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered February 24, 2021
In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at
No(s): CP-51-CR-0802161-2006
BEFORE: BENDER, P.J.E., BOWES, J., and DUBOW, J.
MEMORANDUM BY BENDER, P.J.E.: FILED MAY 25, 2022
Appellant, Arnaldo Torres Santiago, appeals from the post-conviction
court’s February 24, 2021 order denying, as untimely, his petition filed under
the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA), 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-9546. After careful
review, we affirm.
The PCRA court summarized the pertinent facts and procedural history
of Appellant’s case, as follows:
On April 23, 2006, Appellant fatally shot fifteen[-]year[-]old Omar
Rodriguez…. On December 12, 2007, Appellant was convicted of
first-degree murder, firearms not to be carried without a license,
carrying firearms in public in Philadelphia, and possessing
instruments of crime in a bench trial before the Honorable Renee
Cardwell Hughes. That same day, Judge Hughes sentenced
Appellant to life imprisonment for the murder conviction, plus a
concurrent[,] aggregate term of five and a half to eleven years’
imprisonment for the remaining offenses. The Pennsylvania
Superior Court affirmed Appellant’s judgment of sentence on
August 28, 2009, and on March 22, 2010, the Pennsylvania
Supreme Court denied allowance of appeal. [Commonwealth v.
Santiago, 980 A.2d 659 (Pa. Super. 2009), appeal denied, 991
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A.2d 312 (Pa. 2010).] Appellant filed a petition for writ of
certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, which was denied
on October 4, 2010. [Santiago v. Pennsylvania, 562 U.S. 866(2010).]
On June 1, 2010, Appellant filed a pro se PCRA petition and a pro
se amended PCRA petition on June 7, 2010. On February 27,
2012, Appellant filed a waiver of counsel. On October 29, 2012,
Appellant filed another pro se amended PCRA petition. …
Appellant’s PCRA petition was dismissed on August 6, 2013. On
August 21, 2013, Appellant filed a notice of appeal to the
Pennsylvania Superior Court. On March 13, 2015, the
Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed [the order denying
Appellant’s petition. See Commonwealth v. Santiago, 120
A.3d 1054 (Pa. Super. 2015) (unpublished memorandum).]
Appellant filed a petition for allowance of appeal to the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court[,] which was denied on August 19,
2015. [See Commonwealth v. Santiago, 121 A.3d 496 (Pa.
2015).]
On May 4, 2018, Appellant filed a subsequent pro se PCRA
petition. [On August 13, 2020, the court issued a Pa.R.Crim.P.
907 notice of its intent to dismiss Appellant’s petition as being
untimely filed. On August 24, 2020, Appellant, who had retained
counsel at that point, filed a petition requesting to file an amended
petition. The court did not rule on that request. Instead, o]n
February 24, 2021, Appellant’s subsequent[,] pro se PCRA petition
was dismissed as untimely. On March 5, 2021, Appellant filed a
notice of appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. On July 26,
2021, Appellant filed his [Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) concise] statement of
[errors] complained of on appeal.
PCRA Court Opinion (PCO), 9/21/21, at 1-2 (unnecessary capitalization
omitted). The PCRA court filed its Rule 1925(a) opinion on September 21,
2021.
Herein, Appellant states one issue for our review: “Did the PCRA [c]ourt
violate Appellant’s Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights when it
found Appellant’s claim, that Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes applied an
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unconstitutional[,] elevated reasonable[-]doubt standard during the waiver
trial, was untimely and/or lacked merit?” Appellant’s Brief at 3.
Preliminarily, we note that this Court’s standard of review regarding an
order denying a petition under the PCRA is whether the determination of the
PCRA court is supported by the evidence of record and is free of legal error.
Commonwealth v. Ragan, 923 A.2d 1169, 1170 (Pa. 2007). We must begin
by addressing the timeliness of Appellant’s petition, because the PCRA time
limitations implicate our jurisdiction and may not be altered or disregarded in
order to address the merits of a petition. See Commonwealth v. Bennett,
930 A.2d 1264, 1267 (Pa. 2007). Under the PCRA, any petition for post-
conviction relief, including a second or subsequent one, must be filed within
one year of the date the judgment of sentence becomes final, unless one of
the following exceptions set forth in 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(i)-(iii) applies:
(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
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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). Additionally, section 9545(b)(2) requires that
any petition attempting to invoke one of these exceptions “be filed within one
year of the date the claim could have been presented.” 42 Pa.C.S. §
9545(b)(2).1
Here, Appellant’s judgment of sentence became final on October 4,
2010, when the United States Supreme Court denied his petition for writ of
certiorari. Thus, his instant petition, filed on May 4, 2018, is patently
untimely. For this Court to have jurisdiction to review the merits thereof,
Appellant must prove that he meets one of the exceptions to the timeliness
requirements set forth in 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b).
Appellant argues that he meets the after-discovered evidence exception
of section 9545(b)(1)(ii). He explains that, “[y]ears after his conviction[, he]
learned for the very first time from reading Basil Brooks v. Robert Gilmore,
et. al., [2017 WL 3475475] (E.D. Pa. Aug. 11, 2017)[,] that [his trial judge,]
Judge Hughes[,] apparently misunderstood the reasonable doubt standard.”
Appellant’s Brief at 8. In Brooks, the district court concluded that Judge
Hughes’s jury instruction for reasonable doubt, which utilized an “emotionally
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1Section 9545(b)(2) previously stated that a petition must be filed within 60
days of the date the claim could have been presented. The provision was
amended, effective December 24, 2018, to allow one year for the filing of the
petition. The amendment applies to any claims arising on or after December
24, 2017.
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charged” hypothetical, improperly elevated the level of doubt necessary to
secure an acquittal. Id. at *5.
Here, the jury instruction found inadequate in Brooks was not given, as
Appellant chose to proceed to a non-jury trial before Judge Hughes.
Nevertheless, Appellant claims that the Brooks instruction demonstrates
Judge Hughes’s overall misunderstanding of the reasonable doubt standard,
and is sufficient to prove that she used an elevated standard in assessing his
guilt. He further contends that
because [he] had a waiver trial, he had no way of knowing how
the judge, in her own mind, was going to apply the law. In that
she was a very experienced judge who handled likely thousands
of jury and waiver trials over her long career, Appellant had no
reason to even consider[,] before reading Brooks[,] that she
misunderstood and/or misapplied the reasonable doubt standard
in most if not all of her cases. He assumed, as his right, that the
[j]udge had correctly applied the law to the facts of his case.
Appellant’s Brief at 13. Thus, he insists that the Brooks case revealed to him
a new fact that meets the timeliness exception of section 9545(b)(1)(ii).
Appellant’s reliance on Brooks cannot satisfy the timeliness exception.
In Commonwealth v. Watts, 23 A.3d 980 (Pa. 2011), our Supreme Court
held that “judicial determinations are not facts[,]” and, instead, “an in-court
ruling or published opinion is law for it is simply the embodiment of abstract
principles applied to actual events.” Id. at 986-87. More recently, in
Commonwealth v. Reid, 235 A.3d 1124 (Pa. 2020), the Court declared that
“a judicial opinion — even one which may establish a new theory or method
of obtaining relief — does not amount to a new ‘fact’ under Section
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9545(b)(1)(ii) of the PCRA.” Id. at 1148 (citing Watts, 23 A.3d at 987) (some
formatting altered).
Based on the Court’s rationale in Watts and Reid, this Court has
repeatedly rejected petitioners’ attempts to rely on Brooks to meet the newly-
discovered fact exception. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Erwin, No. 320
EDA 2020, unpublished memorandum at *5 (Pa. Super. filed Jan. 4, 2021)
(concluding that, under Watts and Reid, “we cannot consider
the Brooks decision, regardless of whether it established a new theory of
relief, to be a new ‘fact’ for purposes of [s]ection 9545(b)(1)(ii)”) (citations
omitted)); Commonwealth v. Cooper, No. 889 EDA 2018, unpublished
memorandum at *2 (Pa. Super. filed Nov. 13, 2018) (rejecting Cooper’s
argument “that the Brooks decision constitutes a newly-discovered fact that
satisfies the timeliness exception under section 9545(b)(1)(ii)[,]” under the
holding of Watts that “judicial determinations are not facts”) (quoting Watts,
23 A.3d at 986); Commonwealth v. Twitty, No. 3282 EDA 2016,
unpublished memorandum at *3 (Pa. Super. filed July 26, 2018) (same).2
Here, Appellant contends that he “is not arguing that the judicial ruling
in Brooks is itself a ‘new fact[.’] Rather, Appellant is arguing that when he
read the Brooks case[,] he became aware for the very first time of the new
fact that Judge Hughes had been applying the reasonable doubt standard
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2Pursuant to Pennsylvania Rule of Appellate Procedure 126, unpublished, non-
precedential memorandum decisions of the Superior Court filed after May 1,
2019, may be cited for their persuasive value. Pa.R.A.P. 126(b).
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incorrectly.” Appellant’s Brief at 8. Clearly, Appellant’s insistence that Judge
Hughes’s reasonable doubt standard was incorrect is squarely premised on
the holding of Brooks. Thus, based on Watts, Reid, and the decisions by
this Court cited above, Appellant’s reliance on Brooks cannot satisfy the
newly-discovered-exception of section 9545(b)(1)(ii).3
Order affirmed.
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3 In any event, we also note that this Court is “not bound by the decisions of
federal courts inferior to the U.S. Supreme Court.” In re Stevenson, 40 A.3d
1212, 1216 (Pa. 2012). In Commonwealth v. Martinez, No. 1921 & 1922
EDA 2020, unpublished memorandum (Pa. Super. filed March 8, 2022), we
observed that “this Court [has] previously addressed, and consistently
rejected, the precise Brooks-based challenge to the reasonable doubt
instruction at issue herein.” Id. at *5 (collecting cases). For instance, in
Commonwealth v. Drummond, 2187 EDA 2018, unpublished memorandum
at *5 (Pa. Super. filed Feb. 16, 2021), our Court concluded that Judge
Hughes’s use of a hypothetical nearly identical to that assessed in Brooks did
not improperly elevate the standard of proof when viewing the instruction as
a whole. See also Commonwealth v. Nam, No. 3641 EDA 2018,
unpublished memorandum at *3 (Pa. Super. filed Aug. 21, 2019) (unpublished
memorandum) (concluding an almost identical set of instructions “when read
in context of the entire instruction … states the law accurately”);
Commonwealth v. Vando, 242 A.3d 457 (Pa. Super. 2020) (unpublished
memorandum) (same). While our Supreme Court granted allowance of appeal
in Drummond to analyze this issue, it has yet to issue its decision. See
Commonwealth v. Drummond, 261 A.3d 1035 (Pa. filed August 25, 2021).
Consequently, as the law currently stands, Appellant’s underlying claim that
Judge Hughes applied an elevated standard of proof would fail on the merits,
even if he met a timeliness exception.
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Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 5/25/2022
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