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NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37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

v.

YAMIL TORRES 

Appellant

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 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

 PENNSYLVANIA

 No. 4051 EDA 2017

Appeal from the PCRA Order November 28, 2017

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

No(s): CP-51-CR-0916741-1993

BEFORE: LAZARUS, J., OLSON, J., and STRASSBURGER*, J.

JUDGMENT ORDER BY LAZARUS, J.: FILED MARCH 25, 2019

Yamil Torres appeals from the order, entered in the Court of Common 

Pleas of Philadelphia County, dismissing as untimely his petition filed under 

the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA), 42 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546. We affirm. 

In 1994, Torres was convicted of first-degree murder, third-degree 

murder, and related offenses for the shooting deaths of Carlos Santiago and 

Robert Velasquez. The court sentenced Torres, who was 20 years old at the 

time of the commission of his crimes, to life imprisonment without parole on 

the first-degree murder conviction and a consecutive sentence of 10-20 years’ 

imprisonment on the third-degree murder conviction. On direct appeal, this 

Court affirmed his judgments of sentence. Commonwealth v. Torres, 665 

A.2d 1303 (Pa. Super. 1995). Torres did not seek review in the Pennsylvania 

Supreme Court. 
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On November 9, 2000, Torres filed his first PCRA petition, which the 

court dismissed as untimely. On appeal, this Court affirmed. 

Commonwealth v. Torres, 844 A.2d 1290 (Pa. Super. 2003). The 

Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied Torres’ petition for allowance of appeal. 

Commonwealth v. Torres, 852 A.2d 312 (Pa. Super. 2004) (Table). 

On August 16, 2012, following the United States Supreme Court’s 

decision in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S 460 (2012), Torres filed the instant 

PCRA petition. Following the Court’s decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 

136 S. Ct. 718 (2016), which made its holding in Miller retroactive, Torres 

amended his PCRA petition. On November 28, 2017, the PCRA court 

dismissed the petition as untimely. On appeal, Torres claims that he was a 

“minor” at the time of his offenses because he was under the age of 21, and 

that therefore the Miller decision entitles him to relief based on both the 

Eighth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the United States 

Constitution. 

Recently, this Court has rejected these claims. See Commonwealth 

v. Lee, 2019 PA Super 64 (Pa. Super. 2019) (en banc) (holding defendant, 

who was over age eighteen at the time of her offense, could not invoke Miller

to overcome the PCRA time-bar); see also Commonwealth v. 

Montgomery, 181 A.3d 359, 366 (Pa. Super. 2018) (en banc) (“Neither the 

Supreme Court of the United States nor our Supreme Court has held that 

Miller announced a new rule under the Equal Protection Clause.”). 
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The PCRA court, therefore, properly rejected Torres’ effort to extend 

Miller to satisfy the new constitutional rule exception to the PCRA time-bar. 

42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1)(iii). We find no error.

Order affirmed.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 3/25/19