J-S16043-17

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

PENNSYLVANIA

Appellee

v.

JAMEL WAYNE WATLEY,

Appellant No. 1545 WDA 2016

Appeal from the PCRA Order September 22, 2016

in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County

Criminal Division at Nos.: CP-02-CR-0005989-1993

CP-02-CR-0007012-1993

BEFORE: MOULTON, J., RANSOM, J., and PLATT, J.*

MEMORANDUM BY PLATT, J.: FILED APRIL 17, 2017

Appellant, Jamel Wayne Watley, appeals pro se from the denial of his 

fifth petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA), 42 

Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546, as untimely. We affirm.

We take the following facts from our independent review of the 

certified record. On October 7, 1993, a jury convicted Appellant of first 

degree murder, aggravated assault, criminal conspiracy, and firearms not to 

be carried without a license.1 The charges resulted from his fatal shooting of 

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* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.

1 18 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 2501, 2702(a)(1), 903, and 6106, respectively.
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the victim on April 27, 1993, when Appellant was twenty years old.2 On 

October 8, 1993, the trial court sentenced Appellant to a term of life 

imprisonment without the possibility of parole. On July 21, 1995, a panel of 

this Court reversed Appellant’s judgment of sentence and remanded for a 

new trial. (See Commonwealth v. Watley, 668 A.2d 1199 (Pa. Super. 

1995) (unpublished memorandum)). The Pennsylvania Supreme Court 

reversed this Court’s decision on July 29, 1997, reinstating the judgment of 

sentence. (See Commonwealth v. Watley, 699 A.2d 1240, at 1246 (Pa. 

1997)).

On February 5, 1998, Appellant filed a timely PCRA petition. 

Appointed counsel filed an amended petition, which the PCRA court denied 

on August 11, 1998. Appellant did not appeal the denial. On October 23, 

2006, and February 26, 2010, Appellant filed his second and third PCRA 

petitions. The PCRA court dismissed both petitions as untimely, this Court 

affirmed the dismissals, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied 

Appellant’s petitions for allowance of appeal. (See Commonwealth v. 

Watley, 945 A.2d 772 (Pa. Super. 2007) (unpublished memorandum), 

appeal denied, 946 A.2d 687 (Pa. 2008); Commonwealth v. Watley, 26 

A.3d 1179 (Pa. Super. 2011) (unpublished memorandum), appeal denied, 

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2 Appellant was born on February 12, 1973. (See Criminal Information, 

6/09/93, at 1).
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31 A.3d 292 (Pa. 2011)). On August 15, 2012, Appellant filed his fourth 

PCRA petition, which the PCRA court dismissed as untimely. Appellant did 

not appeal.

On March 22, 2016, Appellant filed his current pro se PCRA petition, 

his fifth. Appointed counsel filed a Turner/Finley3“no-merit” letter and 

motion to withdraw, on July 13, 2016. On July 26, 2016, the PCRA court 

granted counsel’s motion to withdraw, and provided Appellant with Rule 907 

notice of its intent to dismiss the petition without a hearing. See

Pa.R.Crim.P. 907(1). Appellant responded to the notice on August 15, 2016. 

On September 22, 2016, the PCRA court dismissed the PCRA petition as 

untimely. Appellant timely appealed.

4

Appellant raises four questions for our review:

I. Did the PCRA court err as a matter of law when it 

dismissed Appellant’s PCRA petition?

II. Does the Eighth Amendment to the United States 

Constitution prohibit the sentence of mandatory life without 

parole for individuals over age [seventeen,] but below age 

[twenty-five]?

III. Does the Eighth Amendment to the United States 

Constitution prohibit the sentence of mandatory life without 

parole for adults convicted of murder?

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3 Commonwealth v. Turner, 544 A.2d 927 (Pa. 1988); Commonwealth 

v. Finley, 550 A.2d 213 (Pa. Super. 1988) (en banc).

4 On November 9, 2016, Appellant filed a timely statement of errors 

complained of on appeal, pursuant to the PCRA court’s order. The court filed 

an opinion on December 6, 2016. See Pa.R.A.P. 1925.
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IV. Does the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause 

prohibit the sentence of mandatory life without parole for 

persons convicted of murder in the Commonwealth of 

Pennsylvania?

(Appellant’s Brief, at 4) (unnecessary capitalization omitted).

Our standard of review of an order denying PCRA relief is 

whether the record supports the PCRA court’s determination, and 

whether the PCRA court’s determination is free of legal error. 

The PCRA court’s findings will not be disturbed unless there is no 

support for the findings in the certified record.

Commonwealth v. Brown, 143 A.3d 418, 420 (Pa. Super. 2016) (citations 

omitted).

We begin by addressing the timeliness of Appellant’s petition.

The PCRA provides eligibility for relief in conjunction with 

cognizable claims, . . . and requires petitioners to comply with 

the timeliness restrictions. . . . [A] PCRA petition, including a 

second or subsequent petition, must be filed within one year of 

the date that judgment becomes final. A judgment becomes 

final for purposes of the PCRA 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 the review.

It is well-settled that the PCRA’s time restrictions are 

jurisdictional in nature. As such, this statutory time-bar 

implicates the court’s very power to adjudicate a controversy 

and prohibits a court from extending filing periods except as the 

statute permits. Accordingly, the period for filing a PCRA 

petition is not subject to the doctrine of equitable tolling; 

instead, the time for filing a PCRA petition can be extended only 

by operation of one of the statutorily enumerated exceptions to 

the PCRA time-bar.

The exceptions to the PCRA time-bar are found in Section 

9545(b)(1)(i)–(iii) (relating to governmental interference, newly 

discovered facts, and newly recognized constitutional rights), 

and it is the petitioner’s burden to allege and prove that one of 
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the timeliness exceptions applies. Whether a petitioner has 

carried his burden is a threshold inquiry that must be resolved 

prior to considering the merits of any claim. . . .

Commonwealth v. Robinson, 139 A.3d 178, 185–86 (Pa. 2016)

(quotation marks and citations omitted).

Here, Appellant’s judgment of sentence became final on October 27, 

1997, when his time to file a petition for a writ of certiorari expired. See 42 

Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(3); U.S. Sup. Ct. R. 13. Therefore, Appellant had until 

October 27, 1998, to file a timely PCRA petition. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 

9545(b)(1). Because Appellant filed the instant petition on March 22, 2016, 

it is untimely on its face, and the PCRA court lacked jurisdiction to review it 

unless he pleaded and proved one of the statutory exceptions to the timebar. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1)(i)-(iii).

Section 9545 of the PCRA provides only three limited exceptions that 

allow for review of an untimely PCRA petition:

(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.

Id.
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Any petition invoking an exception must “be filed within [sixty] days of 

the date the claim could have been presented.” 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(2). 

“If the [PCRA] petition is determined to be untimely, and no exception has 

been pled and proven, the petition must be dismissed without a hearing 

because Pennsylvania courts are without jurisdiction to consider the merits 

of the petition.” Commonwealth v. Jackson, 30 A.3d 516, 519 (Pa. 

Super. 2011), appeal denied, 47 A.3d 845 (Pa. 2012) (citation omitted).

Here, Appellant claims the benefit of the newly recognized and 

retroactively applied constitutional right exception at 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 

9545(b)(1)(iii), by arguing that his life sentence is unconstitutional pursuant 

to Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012), and Montgomery v. 

Louisianna, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016).

5

 (See Appellant’s Brief, at 8-13). 

Appellant acknowledges that he “was twenty (20) years old at the time of 

the [] crime[,]” but maintains that he was “not an adult because the 

biological process of a child is not complete until one reaches their midtwenties[,]” and thus, he should “be treated similarly” to his “juvenile 

counterparts[.]” (Id. at 11). We disagree.

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5

In Miller, the United States Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional 

for states to sentence juvenile homicide defendants to mandatory sentences 

of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. See Miller, supra at 

2469. In Montgomery, the United States Supreme Court determined that 

its Miller holding constituted a new substantive rule of constitutional law 

that must be applied retroactively to cases on collateral review. See 

Montgomery, supra at 736.
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This Court has expressly “[held] that petitioners who were older than 

[eighteen] at the time they committed murder are not within the ambit of 

the Miller decision and therefore may not rely on that decision to bring 

themselves within the time-bar exception in Section 9545(b)(1)(iii).” 

Commonwealth v. Furgess, 149 A.3d 90, 94 (Pa. Super. 2016) (case 

citation omitted). Therefore, Appellant’s argument predicated on an 

extension of Miller and Montgomery fails. See id.

In sum, we conclude Appellant has not met his burden of proving that 

his untimely PCRA petition fits within one of the three exceptions to the 

PCRA’s time-bar. See Robinson, supra at 185–86. Accordingly, we affirm 

the order of the PCRA court.

Order affirmed.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 4/17/2017