J-A22015-23

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA

v.

DENNY SCOTT BAILEY 

Appellant

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 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

 PENNSYLVANIA

 No. 1034 WDA 2022

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Entered December 13, 2021

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

No(s): CP-17-CR-0000371-2018

BEFORE: BOWES, J., OLSON, J., and KING, J.

MEMORANDUM BY BOWES, J.: FILED: October 6, 2023

Denny Scott Bailey appeals from the judgment of sentence imposed 

after he was convicted of, inter alia, first-degree murder. We affirm.

The trial court set forth the following background and procedural history 

of this matter:

On April 3, 2018, a criminal complaint was filed charging 

[Appellant] . . . with the murder of Chase Anderson. . . . The 

charges stemmed from an incident that occurred on the evening 

of August 12, 2017 into the morning of August 13, 2017. During 

the incident, [Appellant] and his co-defendant, Kenja Tew, lured 

. . . Anderson to a secluded area in the woods, and assaulted, 

stabbed, and slit the throat of . . . Anderson. [Appellant] and Tew 

then attempted to burn Anderson’s body. After the killing, 

[Appellant], Tew, and another co-defendant, Chantell Demi, 

cleaned the blood off of their bodies, burned the clothing they 

were wearing during the attack, and buried the weapons used. 

The case proceeded through the normal pre-trial 

procedures[,] with each side filing numerous pre-trial motions. 

One of the pre-trial motions filed by [Appellant] was the second 

amended omnibus pretrial motions. The omnibus motions 
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included a motion for change of venue, which asserted that there 

was extensive media coverage of the case, and [Appellant] could 

not receive a fair and impartial jury in Clearfield County. A hearing 

on [Appellant]’s pretrial motions was held on June 20, 2019, and 

the motion for change of venue was ultimately denied by an . . . 

opinion and order dated January 23, 2020.

Jury selection was held on August 12, 2021. Twelve jurors 

and six alternates were empaneled as the jury for the case. On 

October 26, 2021, [Appellant]’s eight-day jury trial commenced. 

Upon conclusion of the jury trial, the jury entered a verdict of 

guilty for all counts on the information,[1]including murder in the 

first degree. 

Trial Court Opinion, 12/1/22, at 1-2.

On December 13, 2021, the trial court sentenced Appellant to life 

without possibility of parole for the murder conviction and imposed various 

consecutive and concurrent periods of incarceration as to the remaining 

charges that did not merge for sentencing purposes. Id. at 2. The sentencing 

order was amended several days later and included a no contact provision 

concerning several of the victims and their families. See Amended Sentence 

Order, 12/16/21, at unnumbered 2.

Appellant filed a timely post-sentence motion, arguing as one of his 

claims that the sentence was illegal because the court had no authority to 

impose conditions on a state sentence. After a hearing and consideration of 

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1 The charges included criminal homicide, aggravated assault, kidnapping, 

various counts of criminal conspiracy, tampering with evidence, abuse of 

corpse, simple assault, and recklessly endangering another person.
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briefs, the court granted the motion in part as to this issue on August 9, 2022.2 

Accordingly, the court issued an amended sentencing order, which was 

entered on August 10, 2022. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal on 

September 9, 2022.

3

Both Appellant and the trial court complied with Pa.R.A.P. 1925. 

Appellant presents a single issue on appeal: “Whether the lower court erred 

in denying Appellant’s motion for change of venue.” Appellant’s brief at 8 

(cleaned up).

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2 We note that the court’s order was entered more than 120 days from the 

date the motion was filed. Generally, if a court does not decide a postsentence motion within 120 days, it shall be deemed denied by operation of 

law. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 720(B)(3)(a). In that event, “the clerk of courts shall 

forthwith enter an order on behalf of the court . . . that the post-sentence 

motion is deemed denied.” Pa.R.Crim.P. 720(B)(3)(c). Here, although the 

court granted the motion after the 120-day period, the clerk of courts did not 

enter any order deeming the motion denied. We have held that under similar 

circumstances, this constitutes a “breakdown in the court system.” 

Commonwealth v. Perry, 820 A.2d 734, 735 (Pa.Super. 2003). 

Accordingly, in the interest of judicial economy, we exercise our power under 

Pa.R.A.P. 105(a) to disregard these technical errors and consider the appeal 

as properly filed.

3 On December 19, 2022, this Court directed Appellant to show cause as to 

why the appeal should not be quashed as untimely since, among other things, 

the notice of appeal was filed thirty-one days from the date indicated on the 

court’s amended sentence order. Appellant submitted a timely response, and 

we discharged the rule, advising that the issue may be revisited by this panel. 

Based on our review of the certified record, there is no indication that the 

amended sentence, dated September 9, 2022, was imposed in open court. 

Rather, it appears to have been issued by the court in conjunction with the 

decision to grant in part Appellant’s post-sentence motion and was not 

docketed until September 10, 2022. We consequently determine that 

Appellant’s appeal, filed exactly thirty days from the date the amended 

sentence was entered on the docket, is timely. 
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Our standard of review relating to the trial court’s denial of a motion for 

a change of venue “is whether there has been an abuse of discretion on the 

part of the trial judge.” Commonwealth v. Devries, 112 A.3d 663, 666 

(Pa.Super. 2015). It is axiomatic that “[v]enue or venire may be changed by 

that court when it is determined after hearing that a fair and impartial trial 

cannot otherwise be had in the county where the case is currently pending.” 

Pa.R.Crim.P. 584(A). Our High Court has stated that “the trial court is in the 

best position to assess the atmosphere of the community and to judge the 

necessity of any requested change.” Commonwealth v. Briggs, 12 A.3d 

291, 313 (Pa. 2011). 

Further, in addressing this type of claim, this Court has observed as 

follows:

For pre-trial publicity to be presumptively prejudicial, a 

defendant must prove, inter alia, that the publicity was so 

extensive, sustained, and pervasive without sufficient time 

between publication and trial for the prejudice to dissipate, that 

the community must be deemed to have been saturated. The 

publicity must be . . . inflammatory and slanted toward conviction 

rather than factual and objective. Finally, even if there has been 

inherently prejudicial publicity which has saturated the 

community, no change of venue is warranted if the passage of 

time has sufficiently dissipated the prejudicial effects of the 

publicity.

Commonwealth v. Tanner, 205 A.3d 388, 393 (Pa.Super. 2019) (cleaned 

up).

Appellant argues that the court erred in denying his motion because pretrial coverage from the media was “extensive, sustained, and pervasive.” 
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Appellant’s brief at 16. He highlights that ten of out fifty-eight prospective 

jurors from the pool had familiarity with the case. Id. at 15. He also notes 

that one selected juror was excused after making comments indicating that 

she decided Appellant’s guilt before the presentation of all evidence. Id. He 

believes that this fact, combined with a statement made by that juror after 

being dismissed, demonstrated the pervasive nature of the coverage.4 Id. 

In rejecting Appellant’s claim, the trial court noted that Appellant and 

the Commonwealth were able to select a full jury with six alternatives, and 

thus there was no basis in which to find actual prejudice. See Trial Court 

Opinion, 12/1/22, at 4. It also stated that while some potential jurors likely 

had awareness of the case due to media coverage, all that were empaneled 

stated that they had the ability to set aside what they knew and make a fair 

decision. Id. Further, the court emphasized that at the end of jury selection 

and before each break during trial, the jury was instructed not to investigate 

the case or discuss it with others. Id. As such, the court concluded that 

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4 The remark in question, which was made immediately after the court 

excused the juror and requested that she not discuss the matter with anyone 

else, was made in the following exchange: 

Juror: I feel better this way anyway, just because –

The court: These are not easy things to do.

Juror: Well, no. And I raised my hand several times that I’ve 

known how many people in recollection [sic] to this case. 

N.T. Trial, 11/2/21, at 18.
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Appellant could not meet his burden of showing either a presumption of pretrial prejudice or actual prejudice. Id. at 3.

For its part, the Commonwealth contends that any pre-trial publicity in 

this matter “was not inherently prejudicial” since media coverage was mostly 

factual and objective, which is evidenced by the news articles Appellant

attached to his motion for change of venue and also appended to his brief to 

this Court. Commonwealth’s brief at 6. It cites Commonwealth v. 

Karenbauer, 715 A.2d 1086 (Pa. 1998), for the proposition that bald or 

boilerplate allegations of sensationalism, like those asserted by Appellant 

here, are insufficient. Id. at 6-7. It further maintains that it was nearly four 

years to the day between the incident and the beginning of trial, which 

constituted enough “cooling off time between the publicity and jury selection.” 

Id. at 10.

Upon review of the certified record and the applicable law, we discern 

no abuse of discretion with the trial court’s decision to deny the motion for 

change of venue. As Appellant acknowledges in his own brief, his claim is 

difficult to prove in light of the fact that a full jury, with six alternatives, was 

chosen in this case. See Appellant’s brief at 14. Appellant offered no evidence 

that any of the empaneled jurors who rendered the verdict were partial, and 

thus he has not proven actual prejudice. See Briggs, supra at 313 (stating 

that to be entitled to relief, a defendant must generally show “actual prejudice 

by preventing the empaneling of an impartial jury”). 
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Moreover, this is not a case where pretrial attention was so significant 

as to create a presumption of prejudice. Appellant advances no compelling 

argument that any of the media coverage was “inflammatory and slanted 

toward conviction rather than factual and objective.”5 Tanner, supra at 393. 

The statement from the excused juror about knowing “many people in 

recollection to this case” merely iterated, at most, that the community had 

been exposed to the background of the case. 

Finally, even if we were to presume, arguendo, that there was pervasive 

pre-trial coverage, we find that four years was an adequate passage of time 

to dissipate any prejudicial effects of the publicity. Our Supreme Court has 

held that, in considering whether the cooling off period was sufficient, a court 

must “investigate what a panel of prospective jurors has said about its 

exposure to the publicity in question” and that “what prospective jurors tell us 

about their ability to be impartial will be a reliable guide to whether the 

publicity is still so fresh in their minds that it has removed their ability to be 

objective.” See Briggs, supra at 314. As the trial court aptly summarized, 

extensive voir dire was conducted as to the potential jurors, and only those 

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5 We note that Appendix “D” to Appellant’s brief includes various news articles 

from differing sources concerning the investigation and prosecution of 

Appellant and the other co-defendants in this matter. Our review confirms 

that these were the same pieces attached as exhibits to Appellant’s underlying 

pre-trial motion to change venue. See Second Amended Omnibus Pretrial 

Motions, 1/28/19 (Exhibits A-C). However, Appellant does not discuss how 

these items support his contention that the attention surrounding this case 

was sensational or lacking in objectiveness, or that the community “must be 

deemed to have been saturated.” Commonwealth v. Tanner, 205 A.3d 388, 

393 (Pa.Super. 2019).
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that represented their ability to fairly and impartially decide the case were 

empaneled. See Trial Court Opinion, 12/1/22, at 4. Accordingly, Appellant 

was not entitled to a change of venue for his trial. 

Since Appellant presents no meritorious issues on appeal, we do not 

have cause to disturb his judgment of sentence.

Judgment of sentence affirmed. 

DATE: 10/6/2023