J-S53011-18

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* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA

 Appellee

v.

RONALD G. WEAVER 

Appellant

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 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

 PENNSYLVANIA

 No. 2600 EDA 2017

Appeal from the PCRA Order July 12, 2017

in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County 

Criminal Division at No.: CP-51-CR-1111253-1976

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

MEMORANDUM BY PLATT, J.: FILED NOVEMBER 08, 2018

Appellant, Ronald G. Weaver, appeals pro se from the order dismissing

his second 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 factual and procedural history from the PCRA 

court’s September 14, 2017 opinion and our independent review of the 

certified record. On March 20, 1980, a jury convicted Appellant of murder of 

the first degree and related charges. The charges related to Appellant’s role 

in the robbery and stabbing death of the victim on October 24, 1976. On 

November 18, 1980, the trial court sentenced Appellant to a mandatory term 

of life imprisonment without parole. This Court affirmed the judgment of 

sentence on May 14, 1982. (See Commonwealth v. Weaver, 446 A.2d 684 

(Pa. Super. 1982) (unpublished memorandum)).
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Appellant filed a counseled first PCRA petition on June 29, 1988, which 

the court dismissed on March 19, 1990. This Court affirmed the dismissal on 

May 8, 1991, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied further review on 

October 11, 1991. (See Commonwealth v. Weaver, 595 A.2d 195 (Pa. 

Super. 1991) (unpublished memorandum), appeal denied, 600 A.2d 195 (Pa. 

1991)).

On August 20, 2012, Appellant filed his second PCRA petition pro se. He 

also submitted a supplemental filing on December 20, 2016. On May 25, 

2017, the PCRA court served notice of its intent to dismiss the petition without 

a hearing. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 907(1). Appellant filed a response to the court’s 

notice on June 15, 2017. The court dismissed Appellant’s petition as untimely 

on July 12, 2017. Appellant timely appealed.1

Appellant raises two questions for our review:

I. Did [the trial court] have proper [j]urisdiction to try 

[Appellant] . . . in first instant (sic)?

II. Is Miller v. Alabama[, 567 U.S. 460 (2012),] ruling 

applicable to [Appellant], who was a juvenile according to 

Pennsylvania statutory law?

(Appellant’s Brief, at 3).

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 

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1 The PCRA court did not order Appellant to file a concise statement of errors 

complained of on appeal. The court filed an opinion on September 14, 2017. 

See Pa.R.A.P. 1925.
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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).

Before we can address the merits of the issue[] raised, we 

must determine whether Appellant has established that his PCRA 

petition was timely filed, as the time-bar is jurisdictional. [See] 

42 Pa.C.S.[A.] § 9545(b). A PCRA petition, including a second or 

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

underlying judgment becomes final. A judgment of sentence 

becomes final 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. 42 Pa.C.S.[A.] § 9545(b)(3).

Commonwealth v. Graves, ___ A.3d ___, 2018 WL 4998262, at *3 (Pa. 

Super. filed Oct. 16, 2018) (case citations and quotation marks omitted).

Here, Appellant’s judgment of sentence became final on June 13, 1982, 

when his time to file a petition for allowance of appeal with our Supreme Court 

expired. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(3); Pa.R.A.P. 903(a). Therefore, 

Appellant had until June 14, 1983, to file a timely PCRA petition. See 42 

Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1). Because Appellant filed the instant petition on August 

20, 2012, 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 

time-bar. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1)(i)-(iii).

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

the date the claim could have been presented.” Id. at § 9545(b)(2). “If the 

[PCRA] petition is determined to be untimely, and no exception has been pled 
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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).

2 Specifically, he argues that, although he was over eighteen 

at the time of the crime, his life sentence is unconstitutional pursuant to Miller 

and Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016).

3

 (See Appellant’s 

Brief, at 7-13). We disagree.

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).” 

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2 The exception at subsection (iii) requires a petitioner to plead and prove 

that: “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)(iii).

3

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 

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

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

Montgomery fails. See id.

Moreover, we are not legally persuaded by Appellant’s argument that

the language of the Pennsylvania Juvenile Act renders Miller and 

Montgomery applicable to him. (See Appellant’s Brief, at 8, 12). Even 

assuming arguendo that the Act somehow affected Miller and this Court’s 

precedent applying it, which it does not, Appellant’s prior act of delinquency, 

allegedly committed when he was fifteen years of age,4 does not render the 

murder he committed after his eighteenth birthday a juvenile offense. (See 

Appellant’s Brief, at 7-12); 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 6302 (defining “child” as individual 

who (1) is under the age of 18 years; [or] (2) is under the age of 21 years 

who committed an act of delinquency before reaching the age of 18 years[.]”); 

In re J.M., 42 A.3d 348, 353 n.4 (Pa. Super. 2012) (“The ‘act of delinquency’

referenced in [section 6302] must refer to an act that occurred prior to the 

person’s 18th birthday. Otherwise, the ‘act’ would not have led to delinquency 

proceedings, but to criminal charges as an adult.”).

Accordingly, because Appellant has failed to plead and prove an 

exception to the timeliness requirements of the PCRA, the court properly 

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4

In his supplemental PCRA petition, Appellant “claim[ed] in a sworn affidavit 

that he was adjudicated delinquent at fifteen (15) years of age.” (Supplement 

to PCRA Petition, 12/20/16, at unnumbered page 5; see also Appellant’s 

Brief, at 9).
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dismissed his petition as untimely. See Brown, supra at 420; Jackson, 

supra at 519.

Order affirmed.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 11/8/18