J-S16031-24

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA

v.

DAVE N. WILLIAMS 

Appellant

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 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

 PENNSYLVANIA

 No. 2486 EDA 2023

Appeal from the Order Entered August 23, 2023

In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at 

No(s): CP-51-CR-1200771-2003

BEFORE: STABILE, J., LANE, J., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*

MEMORANDUM BY STEVENS, P.J.E.: FILED JUNE 10, 2024

Appellant, Dave N. Williams, appeals from the order entered in the Court 

of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County dismissing his patently untimely 

serial petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”), 42 

Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546, in which he alleged both the government 

interference exception and the newly discovered fact exception to the PCRA 

time-bar. We affirm. 

Due to our disposition, the underlying facts are not relevant to this 

appeal. Appellant was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder and 

possessing an instrument of crime (“PIC”) and was sentenced to life 

imprisonment on August 19, 2004. On May 31, 2007, this Court affirmed 

Appellant’s judgment of sentence, and our Supreme Cout denied Appellant’s 

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* Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court.
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petition for allowance of appeal on December 28, 2007. Commonwealth v. 

Williams, 929 A.2d 249 (Pa. Super. 2007), appeal denied, 940 A.2d 365 (Pa. 

2007). Ninety days later, on March 2, 2008, Appellant’s judgment of sentence 

became final on when he did not file a writ of certiorari to the United States 

Supreme Court. See U.S. Sup. Ct. Rule 13. Accordingly, Appellant had until 

March 27, 2009, to file timely a PCRA petition.

The record reflects that Appellant timely filed pro se his first substantive 

PCRA petition in 2008. The PCRA court appointed counsel, who filed an 

amended petition. The Commonwealth filed a motion to dismiss, however, 

and the PCRA court sent Appellant notice of its intent to deny and dismiss his 

petition without a hearing pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907. The PCRA Court 

subsequently entered an order dismissing Appellant’s petition, this Court 

affirmed the order of dismissal on October 15, 2010, and the Supreme Court 

of Pennsylvania denied Appellant’s petition for allowance of appeal.

In the ensuing 13 years, Appellant has filed serial untimely PCRA 

petitions, including the December 27, 2022, petition presently at issue. 

Specifically, Appellant asks whether the PCRA court erroneously rejected his 

claims invoking both the newly discovered fact exception and the 

governmental interference exception to the statutory time-bar. According to 

Appellant, he satisfies the former exception with his proffer that he recently 

discovered through due diligence that a detective who worked on his case was 

listed among a group of detectives alleged to have used coercive investigative 

methods leading to the 1992 conviction of a man who, twenty-seven years 
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later, in 2019, was exonerated of the crime. He meets the latter exception, 

he continues, by alluding to a record showing the Commonwealth suppressed 

its knowledge of this detective’s history. We disagree. 

In reviewing an order denying a PCRA petition, our standard of review 

is well settled:

[O]ur standard of review from the denial of a PCRA petition is 

limited to examining whether the PCRA court's determination is 

supported by the evidence of record and whether it is free of legal 

error. The PCRA court's credibility determinations, when 

supported by the record, are binding on this Court; however, we 

apply a de novo standard of review to the PCRA court's legal 

conclusions.

Commonwealth v. Sandusky, 203 A.3d 1033, 1043 (Pa. Super. 2019) 

(citations omitted and formatting altered).

The timeliness of a PCRA petition is a threshold jurisdictional question. 

See Commonwealth v. Miller, 102 A.3d 988, 992 (Pa. Super. 2014); see 

also Commonwealth v. Ballance, 203 A.3d 1027, 1031 (Pa. Super. 2019) 

(stating that “no court has jurisdiction to hear an untimely PCRA petition”). 

Before we reach the merits of Appellant's issue, we first must determine 

whether we have jurisdiction to do so. Pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1), 

any PCRA petition must be filed within one year of the date the judgment 

becomes final unless Appellant alleges and proves that the petition falls within 

three enumerated exceptions, specifically:

(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 
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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)(i)-(iii). A petitioner asserting one of these 

exceptions must file a petition within one year of the date the claim could have 

first been presented. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(2). It is the petitioner's 

“burden to allege and prove that one of the timeliness exceptions applies.” 

Commonwealth v. Albrecht, 994 A.2d 1091, 1094 (Pa. 2010) (citations 

omitted and some formatting altered).

Appellant invokes both the Section 9545(b)(1)(ii) “newly discovered

fact” exception, by alleging the detective committed “bad acts” in prior 

investigations to secure convictions, and the Section 9545(b)(1)(i) 

government interference exception, by alleging the Philadelphia District 

Attorney’s Office suppressed the detective’s prior “bad acts” and corruption

evidence. Appellant raised his newly discovered fact claim by appending to 

his PCRA petition a photocopied page from the Philadelphia Inquirer’s 
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“Homicide Files”, a webpage that describes itself as a “database, built on court 

filings, official records and interviews, [that] aims to provide context about 

these issues [i.e., cases in which witnesses and defendants made allegations 

that detectives fabricated statements, coerced confessions, or engaged in 

other improper techniques].” In some cases, the page indicates, those who 

accused detectives of such misconduct have been deemed not credible by the 

courts. 

Relevant to his petition, Appellant posits, is the page’s reference to the 

criminal case against Willie Veasy, a man convicted of murder in 1992 but 

exonerated in 2019 after spending 27 years in prison. Veasy had alleged he 

was subjected to an abusive, lengthy interrogation that culminated with his 

signing a statement confessing to the murder being investigated. While the 

page Appellant incorporated in his PCRA petition lists the detective’s name 

underneath the “Detective(s) Involved” heading to the Veasy case annotation,

the annotation describing the alleged unlawful investigative acts mentions 

only other detectives.

In concluding that Appellant failed to establish a timeliness exception 

with this proffer, the PCRA court explained:

At the outset, the attached document fails to provide any support 

to substantiate either the detective’s alleged “bad acts,” or the 

Commonwealth’s purported suppression of exculpatory evidence. 

To the contrary, the appended list is just a vague summary of 

allegations lodged against various officers that is borderline 

illegible. Thus, [Appellant] failed to demonstrate Detective 

Mangoni was even included in the document. Furthermore, it is 

wholly unclear what “bad acts” the detective purportedly engaged 
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in [and] how he is “corrupt,” as [Appellant] neglected to provide 

a rational explanation. Even if the document had mentioned 

Detective Mangoni by name, the summary does not cite any 

admissions or conclusive findings of wrongdoing that may be 

linked to [Appellant’s] case.

Trial Court Opinion, 8/23/23, at 2.

For its part, the Commonwealth states that it cannot be held to have 

engaged in interference with Appellant’s ability to raise this claim when its 

search of its Police Misconduct Disclosures (“PMD”) database yields no

information showing that Detective Mangoni had ever engaged in bad acts or 

corruption, and when Appellant otherwise fails to include within his petition 

any details about what Mangoni actually was alleged to have done. Brief of 

Appellee at 8. Alternatively, the Commonwealth observes that Appellant’s

failure to indicate when he first became aware of the “Homicide Files” webpage

regarding the Veasy case requires a finding that he failed to meet his 

obligation under Section 9545(b)(2) to show he raised this claim within one 

year of finding out about the alleged fact. See Commonwealth v. 

Priovolos, 746 A.2d 621, 625-26 (Pa. Super. 2000) (petitioner failed to 

satisfy newly discovered facts exception where no attempt to explain why he 

could not obtain the information much earlier with the exercise of due 

diligence). 

The newly discovered facts exception “renders a petition timely when 

the petitioner establishes that [‘]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.[’]” Commonwealth v. Small, 238 A.3d 1267, 
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1271 (Pa. 2020), quoting 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1)(ii). A PCRA court first 

must determine “whether the facts upon which the claim is predicated were 

unknown to the petitioner[.]” Id. at 1282 (original quotation marks omitted). 

If the PCRA court concludes that the facts were unknown, then the PCRA court 

must next examine whether “the facts could have been ascertained by the 

exercise of due diligence, including an assessment of the petitioner's access 

to public records.” Id. (citation omitted). “Due diligence demands that the 

petitioner take reasonable steps to protect his own interests.” 

Commonwealth v. Brown, 111 A.3d 171, 176 (Pa. Super. 2015). 

Additionally, the claim must be filed within one year of the date the claim 

could have been presented as required by § 9545(b)(2).1

Here, even assuming Appellant had established a factual basis for a 

newly discovered fact claim, he neither pleaded nor proved that he filed his 

December 27, 2022, PCRA petition within one year of having discovered such

facts. In this regard, Appellant failed to specify in his PCRA petition the date 

upon which he became aware of the newspaper website. As observed by the 

PCRA court, Appellant “failed to even allege, much less specifiy, when 

[Appellant] learned of the alleged "facts" underlying [his] claim as mandated 

by 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(2).” PCRA Court’s Pa.R.Crim.P. 907 Notice, 

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1 The newly discovered fact exception “does not require any merits analysis 

of the underlying claim,” and application of the time-bar exception therefore 

does not necessitate proof of the elements of a claim of after-discovered 

evidence. Small, 238 A.3d at 1286.
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7/19/23, at 2. Similarly, the Commonwealth contends, “[Appellant] does not 

state exactly when he learned of Detective Mangoni’s alleged bad acts but 

somehow guarantees that this claim was brought within a year of learning of 

the alleged bad acts (even though he claims that he does not remember when 

he discovered this information). Thus, he has not met his burden.” Brief of 

Appellee, at 10. 

On review of the record, we agree Appellant failed to offer below any 

assertion or explanation identifying when he first learned of the detective’s 

alleged bad acts upon which he bases his newly discovered facts and 

government interference exceptions to the PCRA time-bar. Under the 

circumstances, therefore, he may not qualify for the relief he seeks.

Based on the foregoing discussion, we affirm.

Order affirmed.

Date: 6/10/2024