J-S62021-15 

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37 

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

PENNSYLVANIA 

 Appellee 

v. 

JASON W. BEATTY 

 Appellant No. 429 WDA 2015 

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence September 22, 2014 

In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County 

Criminal Division at No(s): CP-02-CR-0016297-2013 

BEFORE: GANTMAN, P.J., JENKINS, J., and PLATT, J.* 

MEMORANDUM BY JENKINS, J.: FILED OCTOBER 16, 2015 

 Following a bench trial, the trial court found Jason Beatty guilty of 

driving under the influence of a high rate of alcohol1 and careless driving.2 

The court sentenced Beatty to 90 days of intermediate punishment plus one 

year of concurrent probation.3 

In this direct appeal, Beatty raises two issues: 

____________________________________________ 

*

 Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court. 

1

 75 Pa.C.S. § 3802(b) (driving while alcohol concentration in the individual’s 

blood or breath is at least .10% but less than .16%). 

2

 75 Pa.C.S. § 3714. 

3

 The court did not impose further penalty on the other convictions. Beatty 

filed a timely post-sentence motion challenging the weight of the evidence, 

which the trial court denied, and a timely notice of appeal. Both Beatty and 

the trial court complied with Pa.R.A.P. 1925. 
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1. Whether the evidence was insufficient to sustain Beatty’s DUI 

and careless driving convictions as the Commonwealth did not 

prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he drove the vehicle? 

2. Were the verdicts of guilt against the weight of the evidence 

because the trial court ignored overwhelming evidence that [] 

Beatty was not driving the car? 

Brief of Appellant, at 5. We affirm. 

 Beatty first challenges the sufficiency of the evidence. Our standard of 

review for such challenges is well-settled: 

[W]hether[,] viewing all the evidence admitted at trial in the 

light most favorable to the [Commonwealth as the] verdict 

winner, there is sufficient evidence to enable the fact-finder to 

find every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. In 

applying [the above] test, we may not weigh the evidence and 

substitute our judgment for the fact-finder. In addition, we note 

that the facts and circumstances established by the

Commonwealth need not preclude every possibility of innocence. 

Any doubts regarding a defendant’s guilt may be resolved by the 

fact-finder unless the evidence is so weak and inconclusive that 

as a matter of law no probability of fact may be drawn from the 

combined circumstances. The Commonwealth may sustain its 

burden of proving every element of the crime beyond a 

reasonable doubt by means of wholly circumstantial evidence. 

Commonwealth v. Gonzalez, 109 A.3d 711, 716 (Pa.Super.2015). 

The following evidence was adduced during trial: in the early morning 

hours of May 29, 2013, Officer Eric Lakin, a 24 year veteran of the North 

Versailles Township Police Department, responded to a report of an 

automobile accident on Penn Avenue. N.T., 9/22/14, at 5-6. At the scene, 

Officer Lakin observed that a Pontiac G6 had struck a pickup truck. Id. at 6, 

9-10. A female, Amanda Delsignore, was present, and Officer Lakin 

described her as “hysterical” and “frantic.” Id. at 6, 8. Beatty was lying on 
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his back in a field across the street from the collision scene, lapsing in and 

out of consciousness and “slightly combative”. Id. at 6-7, 18. When Officer 

Lakin asked if he had been involved in an accident, Beatty denied being an 

occupant of the vehicle. Id. at 7, 18. There was a laceration on the left 

side of Beatty’s head near his eye, and blood from the laceration ran down 

his face. Id. at 7. Officer Lakin detected a strong odor of alcohol on 

Beatty’s breath. Id. at 8. 

A paramedic crew arrived and immobilized Beatty. Id. Officer Lakin 

spoke with Delsignore, who was upset and crying, and she stated that “she 

was the passenger in the vehicle and [Beatty] was the driver, [and] that 

they had been proceeding up Penn Avenue, having an argument” prior to the 

accident. N.T., 9/22/14, at 9. Delsignore also told Officer Volker, who 

arrived after Officer Lakin, that Beatty was the driver of the vehicle and she 

was the passenger. Id. at 24-25, 26. 

The Pontiac had struck the parked pickup truck head on. N.T., 

9/22/14, at 9. After the impact, the Pontiac spun around and ended up 

parallel with and up against the pickup truck. Id. at 9, 15, 16. Officer Lakin 

noted that the Pontiac’s driver’s side door contained blood smearing, and the 

pickup truck had blood smearing on it as well. Id. at 9-10. Officer Lakin 

testified that “the blood smear would be consistent with the driver of the 

vehicle sustaining injury, as there [were] no other injuries to Delsignore that 

were visible to me at the time.” Id. at 10. Delsignore “stated that she was 
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not injured.” Id. at 13. Nor was Delsignore bleeding; the only source of 

blood was from Beatty. Id. at 22. There was no damage to the passenger 

side of the Pontiac. Id. at 15. The driver’s side window of the Pontiac “had 

been shattered out” by the “secondary side impact” with the pickup truck. 

Id. at 16. The blood smears on the inside of the driver’s side front door of 

the Pontiac were just below where the window would have been had it not 

shattered. Id. at 16, 22. The blood smears on the door of the pickup truck 

were right next to the driver’s side of the Pontiac. Id. at 16, 22. Because 

the driver’s side of the Pontiac was pinned against the pickup truck, nobody 

could have exited the driver’s side of the Pontiac; the only way to exit was 

the passenger side. Id. at 17, 22. Delsignore told Officer Lakin that she 

had helped extricate Beatty from the vehicle.

 Paramedics transported Beatty to the hospital, where a blood draw 

revealed that his blood alcohol content was .110%. N.T., 9/22/14, at 12. 

 Delsignore testified that she went to the hospital after the accident, 

and that her mother was also at the hospital, speaking with Officer Lakin on 

the phone. N.T., 9/22/14, at 31, 36. Officer Lakin told Delsignore’s mother 

that Delsignore had said at the accident scene that Beatty was driving the 

car. Id. Delsignore’s mother relayed this information to Delsignore, and 

Delsignore stated that she was the driver. Id. Delsignore insisted at trial 

that she struck the pickup truck, and the impact threw Beatty from the 

passenger seat to the driver’s side, where his head struck the driver’s side 
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window. Id. at 28-29, 35. She claimed that neither she nor Beatty were 

wearing seatbelts before the accident, and after the collision, she crawled 

over Beatty and pulled him out of the car. Id. at 29, 33. Beatty is 6’1” or 

6’2”, while Delsignore is only 5’6”. Id. at 33. 

75 Pa.C.S. § 3802(b) provides: 

An individual may not drive, operate or be in actual physical 

control of the movement of a vehicle after imbibing a sufficient 

amount of alcohol such that the alcohol concentration in the 

individual’s blood or breath is at least 0.10% but less than 

0.16% within two hours after the individual has driven, operated 

or been in actual physical control of the movement of the 

vehicle. 

The term “operate” 

necessitates evidence of actual, physical control of either the 

machinery of the motor vehicle or the management of the 

vehicle’s movement, but does not require evidence that the 

vehicle was in motion. Commonwealth v. Johnson, 833 A.2d 

260, 263 (Pa.Super.2003). Under Pennsylvania law, an 

eyewitness is not required to establish one was driving, 

operating, or in actual physical control of a motor vehicle, but, 

rather, the Commonwealth may establish the same through 

wholly circumstantial evidence. Id. ‘Our precedent indicates that 

a combination of the following factors is required in determining 

whether a person had ‘actual physical control’ of an automobile: 

the motor running, the location of the vehicle, and additional 

evidence showing that the defendant had driven the vehicle.’ 

Commonwealth v. Brotherson, 888 A.2d 901, 904 

(Pa.Super.2005) (citing Commonwealth v. Woodruff, [] 668 

A.2d 1158, 1161 ([Pa.Super.]1995)). In addition, when the 

location of the vehicle supports an inference that it was driven, 

this inference will serve as a key factor in a finding of actual 

control; conversely, where the location of a vehicle supports an 

inference that it was not driven, this Court has rejected the 

inference of actual control. Brotherson, 888 A.2d at 905. In 

Brotherson, we determined that “[t]he highly inappropriate 

location of the car—on the basketball court of a gated children’s 
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playground—created a strong inference that it was an already 

intoxicated [a]ppellant who had driven the car to that spot.” Id.

Commonwealth v. Young, 904 A.2d 947, 954 (Pa.Super.2006). 

Although Beatty does not dispute that his blood alcohol content was 

over .10%, he argues that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he 

was driving the Pontiac. Viewed in the light most favorable to the 

Commonwealth, the evidence was sufficient to establish beyond a 

reasonable doubt that Beatty drove the Pontiac. Delsignore admitted to two 

police officers at the accident scene that Beatty was the driver and she was 

the passenger, and the crash occurred because they were having an 

argument. The physical evidence also proves that Beatty was the driver. 

The blood smears on the vehicles were found only to the left of the driver’s 

seat of the Pontiac -- specifically, on the door panel underneath the 

shattered glass of the driver’s side window and on the pickup truck against 

the Pontiac. Thus, the blood came from an injury to the driver. Only Beatty 

lost any blood and showed any sign of injury. Delsignore, on the contrary, 

was not bleeding and had no visible injury. The injury on the left side of 

Beatty’s head correlated with the locations of the blood smears on the 

driver’s side door and pickup truck. Delsignore’s testimony that she was the 

driver is of no moment, because once again, we must view the evidence in 
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the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. Therefore, Beatty’s 

challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence is devoid of merit.4

In his next argument, Beatty contends that the verdict was against the 

weight of the evidence. The law pertaining to weight of the evidence claims 

is well-settled. The weight of the evidence is a matter exclusively for the 

finder of fact, who is free to believe all, part, or none of the evidence and to 

determine the credibility of the witnesses. Commonwealth v. Forbes, 867 

A.2d 1268, 1273–74 (Pa.Super.2005). A new trial is not warranted because 

of “a mere conflict in the testimony” and must have a stronger foundation 

than a reassessment of the credibility of witnesses. Commonwealth v. 

Bruce, 916 A.2d 657, 665 (Pa.Super.2007). Rather, the role of the trial 

judge is to determine that notwithstanding all the facts, certain facts are so 

clearly of greater weight that to ignore them or to give them equal weight 

with all the facts is to deny justice. Id. On appeal, “our purview is 

extremely limited and is confined to whether the trial court abused its 

discretion in finding that the jury verdict did not shock its conscience. Thus, 

appellate review of a weight claim consists of a review of the trial court’s 

____________________________________________ 

4

 In support of his challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, Beatty cites 

Commonwealth v. Johnson, 312 A.2d 430 (Pa.Super.1973), in which a 

plurality of this Court held that the circumstantial evidence submitted by the 

Commonwealth was not sufficient to sustain drunk driving conviction. As a 

plurality opinion, Johnson is not binding precedent. See Commonwealth 

v. Bethea, 828 A.2d 1066, 1073 (Pa.2003) (reasoning in plurality opinion 

does not carry precedential weight). 
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exercise of discretion, not a review of the underlying question of whether the 

verdict is against the weight of the evidence.” Commonwealth v. Knox,

50 A.3d 732, 738 (Pa.Super.2012). An appellate court may not reverse a 

verdict unless it is so contrary to the evidence as to shock one’s sense of 

justice. Forbes, 867 A.2d at 1273–74. 

The trial court acted within its discretion in finding that Beatty was the 

driver of the Pontiac. The physical evidence summarized above refutes 

Delsignore’s trial testimony that she drove the Pontiac. Moreover, the trial 

court, as factfinder, was free to believe Officer Lakin’s testimony that 

Delsignore admitted at the accident scene that Beatty was the driver. 

For these reasons, we affirm Beatty’s judgment of sentence. 

Judgment of sentence affirmed. 

Judgment Entered. 

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq. 

Prothonotary 

Date: 10/16/2015