J-S38036-19

* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA

v.

OMAR EDWARDS 

Appellant

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 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

 PENNSYLVANIA

 No. 312 EDA 2019

Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered January 2, 2019

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

No(s): CP-51-CR-0209372-1995

BEFORE: OTT, J., DUBOW, J., and COLINS*, J.

MEMORANDUM BY COLINS, J.: FILED AUGUST 06, 2019

Appellant, Omar Edwards, appeals pro se from the order of the Court of 

Common Pleas of Philadelphia County that dismissed his fourth petition filed 

under the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA)1 as untimely. We affirm.

Appellant was convicted by a jury on June 13, 1996 of first-degree 

murder2for killing a man in a drive-by shooting on October 28, 1994. At the 

time that he committed this crime, Appellant was 19 years old. On January 

27, 1997, the court sentenced Appellant to life imprisonment without parole 

for this murder conviction.

Appellant filed a direct appeal in February of 1997. A panel of this Court 

dismissed the appeal on January 8, 1998, and Appellant did not seek 

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1 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541–9546.

2 18 Pa.C.S. § 2502(a).
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allowance of appeal in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Appellant filed a 

timely first PCRA petition on October 7, 1998, which was denied by the PCRA 

court. This Court affirmed the denial of that first PCRA petition on September 

11, 2000 and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied allowance of appeal on

February 6, 2001. In 2002 and 2015, Appellant filed two more unsuccessful 

PCRA petitions. 

On February 26, 2016, Appellant filed the instant, pro se fourth PCRA 

petition asserting that his sentence of life imprisonment without parole is 

unconstitutional under the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Miller 

v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), and the Equal Protection Clause, because 

the rationale on which Miller held that mandatory sentences of life without 

parole are unconstitutional for defendants under the age of 18 is equally 

applicable to him. In the PCRA petition, Appellant asserted that he satisfied 

exceptions to the PCRA’s time limits because Miller was held retroactive by 

the United States Supreme Court in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S.Ct. 

718 (2016), on January 25, 2016.

On September 17, 2018, the PCRA court issued a notice pursuant to 

Pa.R.Crim.P. 907 of its intent to dismiss Appellant's petition without a hearing

on the ground that it was untimely.3 Appellant submitted a letter in response 

to the notice in which he argued the merits of the PCRA petition and requested 

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3 Neither Appellant nor the Commonwealth explains why no action was taken 

with respect to the PCRA petition for over two years.
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a hearing. On January 2, 2019, the PCRA court dismissed Appellant’s PCRA 

petition without a hearing. Appellant timely appealed this order to this Court. 

Appellant argues that the trial court erred in dismissing his PCRA petition 

as untimely because his sentence of life imprisonment without parole is 

allegedly unconstitutional under Miller. This argument is without merit. 

The PCRA provides that “[a]ny petition under this subchapter, including 

a second or subsequent petition, shall be filed within one year of the date the 

judgment becomes final.” 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1). A PCRA petition may be 

filed beyond the one-year time period only if the convicted defendant pleads 

and proves one of the following three exceptions: 

(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. The PCRA’s time limit is mandatory and jurisdictional, and a court may 

not ignore it and reach the merits of the PCRA petition, even where the 

convicted defendant claims that his sentence is unconstitutional and illegal. 

Commonwealth v. Fahy, 737 A.2d 214, 223 (Pa. 1999); Commonwealth 

v. Lee, 206 A.3d 1, 6, 11 (Pa. Super. 2019) (en banc); Commonwealth v. 
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Pew, 189 A.3d 486, 488 (Pa. Super. 2018); Commonwealth v. Woods, 179 

A.3d 37, 42-43 (Pa. Super. 2017).

Appellant’s judgment of sentence became final on February 9, 1998, 

upon the expiration of the thirty-day period within which to file a petition for 

allowance of appeal. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(3). His time limit for filing any 

PCRA petition was therefore February 9, 1999. The instant PCRA petition, 

filed more than 17 years beyond that deadline, is patently untimely unless 

Appellant alleged and proved one of the three limited exceptions set forth in 

Sections 9545(b)(1)(i)-(iii). 

Appellant did not show that his PCRA petition was timely under any of 

these exceptions. Appellant’s PCRA petition asserted a claim that his sentence 

of life imprisonment without parole was unconstitutional under a new 

constitutional right established by Miller. Section 9545(b)(1)(iii)’s exception 

for newly recognized constitutional rights, however, applies only where the 

defendant is entitled to relief under the holding of a United States or 

Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(iii); Lee, 206 

A.3d at 10-11; Commonwealth v. Furgess, 149 A.3d 90, 93-94 (Pa. Super. 

2016). While Miller recognized a new constitutional right and that right was 

ruled retroactive by the United States Supreme Court in Montgomery v. 

Louisiana, 136 S.Ct. at 732-37, those decisions and the decisions of our 

Supreme Court have held only that mandatory life imprisonment without 

parole is unconstitutional where the defendant was under the age of 18 at the 

time of the crime. Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S.Ct. at 725, 736 
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(defendant was 17 years old); Miller, 567 U.S. at 465 (defendants were 14 

years old, Court stated its holding as “mandatory life without parole for those 

under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth 

Amendment’s prohibition on ‘cruel and unusual punishments’”); 

Commonwealth v. Machicote, 206 A.3d 1110, 1112 (Pa. 2019) (defendant 

was 17 years old); Commonwealth v. Batts, 163 A.3d 410, 415 (Pa. 2017)

(defendant was 14 years old). Indeed, our Supreme Court has specifically 

declined to apply Miller to defendants who were 18 or older. See

Commonwealth v. Towles, 208 A.3d 988, 1008-09 (Pa. 2019) (rejecting 

argument that death sentence for 20-year-old was unconstitutional under 

Miller and Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005)). Because Appellant 

was 19 when he killed the victim, he is not entitled to relief under Miller or 

any other decision of the United States or Pennsylvania Supreme Court and 

cannot satisfy Section 9545(b)(1)(iii)’s timeliness exception. 

Rather, Appellant’s claim is that Miller must be extended to 19-yearold defendants based on its rationale and because failure to extend the 

decision would violate the Equal Protection Clause. Such arguments that a 

decision of the United States or Pennsylvania Supreme Court must be 

extended to an additional group of defendants, however, do not satisfy the 

requirements of Section 9545(b)(1)(iii) of the PCRA. Lee, 206 A.3d at 7-11; 

Commonwealth v. Montgomery, 181 A.3d 359, 366-67 (Pa. Super. 2018) 

(en banc); Furgess, 149 A.3d at 94. This Court has repeatedly held that 

claims indistinguishable from those asserted in Appellant’s PCRA petition do 
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not satisfy any exceptions to PCRA’s one-year time limit. See, e.g., Lee, 206 

A.3d at 7-11 (18-year-old defendant’s PCRA petition based on Miller and its 

rationale dismissed as untimely); Pew, 189 A.3d at 490-91 (18-year-old 

defendant’s PCRA petition based on Miller dismissed as untimely); 

Commonwealth v. Montgomery, 181 A.3d at 366-67 (22-year-old 

defendant’s PCRA petition based on Miller and Equal Protection Clause 

dismissed as untimely); Woods, 179 A.3d at 43-44 (18-year-old defendant’s 

claim under Miller dismissed as untimely); Furgess, 149 A.3d at 94 (19-

year-old defendant’s PCRA petition based on Miller and claim that “he was a 

‘technical juvenile’” based on “neuroscientific theories regarding immature 

brain development” dismissed as untimely).

To the extent that Appellant has also asserted that his PCRA petition is 

timely under the Section 9545(b)(1)(ii) for petitions based on newly 

discovered facts, see PCRA Petition at 1 ¶2; Appellant’s Brief at 7, this 

argument likewise fails. The issue raised that Appellant raised in the PCRA 

petition was a claim that his sentence is unconstitutional based the United 

States Supreme Court’s Miller decision. Judicial decisions do not constitute 

new facts for purposes of Section 9545(b)(1)(ii). Commonwealth v. Watts, 

23 A.3d 980, 986-87 (Pa. 2011); Commonwealth v. Kretchmar, 189 A.3d 

459, 467 (Pa. Super. 2018). The only potentially applicable exception to the 

PCRA’s time limits is thus the exception for newly recognized constitutional 

rights, Section 9545(b)(1)(iii), which he cannot satisfy, and the exception for 

newly discovered facts has no applicability to this PCRA petition.
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Moreover, even if Section 9545(b)(1)(ii) were relevant, the PCRA 

petition would still be untimely because the alleged facts are not new. In 

addition to satisfying the requirements of an exception under Sections 

9545(b)(1)(i)-(iii), the convicted defendant must show that he filed the PCRA 

petition within the time limit for these exceptions set by Section 9545(b)(2) 

of the PCRA. Lee, 206 A.3d at 6; Commonwealth v. Sanchez, 204 A.3d 

524, 526-27 (Pa. Super. 2019). At the time that Appellant filed this PCRA 

petition in February 2016, Section 9545(b)(2) required that a PCRA petition 

invoking an exception “be filed within 60 days of the date the claim could have 

been presented.” 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(2) (in effect January 16, 1996 to 

December 23, 2018).

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The only alleged facts asserted by Appellant are scientific studies 

concerning brain development on which Miller, Montgomery v. Louisiana, 

Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), and Roper, were based. Appellant’s 

Brief at 7-9. Those scientific studies were in existence and referenced in the

Miller, Graham, and Roper decisions issued in 2012, 2010, and 2005, years 

before Appellant filed this PCRA Petition in 2016.

5

 Appellant’s attempted 

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4 While Appellant’s PCRA petition was pending, Section 9545(b)(2) was 

amended to provide that “[a]ny petition invoking an exception provided in 

paragraph (1) shall be filed within one year of the date the claim could have 

been presented.” 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(2); Act of October 24, 2018, P.L. 894, 

No. 146, § 2. This amendment has no applicability here, as it applies only to 

claims arising on or after December 24, 2017, Act of October 24, 2018, P.L. 

894, No. 146, §§ 3, 4, over a year after this PCRA petition was filed.

5 Although Montgomery v. Louisiana was issued less than 60 days before 

Appellant’s PCRA Petition, it does not cite any scientific studies. 
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invocation of the exception for newly discovered facts would therefore be 

barred by Section 9545(b)(2) of the PCRA. 

Because Appellant’s PCRA petition was untimely, we affirm the PCRA 

court’s order dismissing Appellant’s PCRA petition.

Order affirmed.

Judge Ott joins in the memorandum.

Judge Dubow concurs in the result.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 8/6/19