J-S04017-21

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE SUPERIOR COURT

OF PENNSYLVANIA

Appellee

v.

ALEX LEROY LOVEJOY 

Appellant No. 816 MDA 2020

Appeal from the PCRA Order entered May 28, 2020

In the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin County

Criminal Division at No: CP-22-CR-0003389-2001

BEFORE: OLSON, J., STABILE, J., and MUSMANNO, J.

MEMORANDUM BY STABILE, J.: FILED MARCH 05, 2021

Appellant, Alex Leroy Lovejoy, appeals from the May 27, 2020 order 

entered in the Court of Common Pleas of Dauphin County, denying his petition 

for collateral relief pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”), 42 

Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546. Upon review, we affirm.

On October 9, 2002, Appellant was convicted of third-degree murder, 

aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person, and two counts 

of criminal conspiracy. On December 12, 2002, the trial court imposed an 

aggregate sentence of 23 to 46 years in prison. This Court affirmed his 

judgment of sentence on June 3, 2004. Appellant did not file a petition for 

allowance of appeal to the Supreme Court. Therefore, Appellant’s judgment 

of sentence was final on July 3, 2004. Absent an exception to the PCRA’s one-
J-S04017-21

- 2 -

year time bar, Appellant had until July 3, 2005 to file a PCRA petition. 42 

Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1).

Appellant timely filed a first PCRA petition on August 2, 2004. That 

petition initially was denied but was ultimately remanded for appointment of 

new counsel. Following denial of the amended petition in 2007, Appellant filed 

an unsuccessful appeal to this Court. His subsequent petition for allowance of 

appeal was denied by our Supreme Court on December 2, 2008. In the years 

between 2008 and 2020, Appellant filed additional petitions seeking PCRA 

and/or habeas corpus relief, all of which were dismissed. 

In his most recent petition, filed on May 6, 2020, Appellant asserted a 

constitutional right exception to the PCRA’s one-year time bar. 42 Pa.C.S.A. 

§ 9545(b)(1)(iii). While his petition was silent as to the basis for the claimed 

exception, he asserted in his supporting brief that the United States Supreme 

Court’s decision in Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S.Ct. 1390 (2020), recognized 

a constitutional right against non-unanimous jury verdicts that the Court held 

to apply retroactively. 

On May 27, 2020, the PCRA court dismissed the petition. This timely 

appeal followed. The court did not order a Rule 1925(b) statement but did 

issue a Statement in Lieu of Memorandum Opinion on June 15, 2020, 

indicating that a May 12, 2020 memorandum opinion explained the reasons 

for dismissing Appellant’s petition, i.e., Appellant’s petition was blatantly 
J-S04017-21

- 3 -

untimely and failed to establish an exception to the timeliness requirements 

of the PCRA. PCRA Court Statement, 6/15/20, at 1. 

In this appeal, Appellant asks us to consider two issues. He first asks if 

the PCRA court erred when it determined Appellant failed to establish an 

exception to the PCRA’s time bar. He next asks if the PCRA court violated 

Appellant’s Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights based on Ramos, which 

held that jury verdicts in criminal trials must be unanimous. Appellant’s Brief 

at 4. Before we may consider the merits of these contentions, we must 

determine whether this Court has jurisdiction to entertain the merits of 

Appellant’s issues. As our Supreme Court recently reiterated, “[I]f a PCRA 

petition is untimely, neither this Court nor the trial court has jurisdiction over 

the petition. Without jurisdiction, we simply do not have the legal authority 

to address the substantive claims.” Commonwealth v. Reid, 235 A.3d 1124, 

1143 (Pa. 2020) (citation omitted). 

By way of background, Appellant has claimed over the years that his 

third-degree murder conviction was not unanimous. He bases his argument 

on the fact that after the five guilty verdicts were read, the jury was polled on 

each guilty verdict. The judge explained, “[E]ach of you will be asked to tell 

us whether or not you agree or disagree with the verdict that was announced 

by the foreperson.” Notes of Testimony, Trial, 10/9/02, at 248. He continued, 

stating, “The foreperson has already announced the verdict of guilty and the 

clerk will go through each juror, jurors one through 12 and ask if they agree 
J-S04017-21

- 4 -

or disagree with that verdict.” Id. When juror number one was asked if he 

agreed with the first of the five guilty verdicts, i.e., the verdict for third-degree 

murder, he answered, “As I wrote.” Id. When called upon, each remaining 

juror answered, “Guilty.” For each of the four remaining verdicts, juror 

number one replied, “Guilty,” as did all other jurors. Id. at 249-54. After the 

jury was polled on the individual guilty verdicts, the clerk read all of the 

charges and the corresponding verdicts and then asked, “So say you all?” The 

jurors responded, “Yes.” Id. at 254. 

The judge then offered some closing remarks to the jury. In those 

remarks, he said, “[T]hank you for making a decision. Thank you for reaching 

a verdict.” Id. at 256. He then explained:

From the court’s perspective, we simply want you to decide, make 

a decision. Because if you don’t, if we have a jury that cannot 

agree to a unanimous verdict, that’s called a hung jury, which 

means the case has to be tried all over again at some later time 

in front of a brand new jury who will hear the same evidence and 

so forth. It is a waste of your tax dollars and it is a waste of 

valuable courtroom time. But you made a decision and that’s 

all we ask you to do. You did that. We are very grateful and 

we appreciate that. 

Id. at 256-57 (emphasis added). The judge then explained that the next step 

in the process would be sentencing, which the court would schedule after 

completion of a pre-sentence investigation. Id. at 257. At the conclusion of 

his remarks, he again thanked the jury and excused them. Id. at 259. At no 

time did the judge or counsel indicate or even suggest that the jurors returned 

anything other than a unanimous verdict on the five counts mentioned above. 
J-S04017-21

- 5 -

Nevertheless, Appellant maintains that juror number one’s “As I wrote” 

response must be interpreted as something other than guilty and, therefore, 

his third-degree murder verdict was not unanimous.1 

In the brief filed with this Court in support of his current petition, 

Appellant asserts that Ramos satisfied the constitutional right exception to 

the PCRA’s time bar as a right asserted that was recognized by the United 

States Supreme Court, and one that “has been held by that court to apply 

retroactively.” Appellant’s Brief at 11. We cannot agree. First, in Ramos, 

the Supreme Court reversed the judgment entered in Louisiana following a 

conviction for second-degree murder in which “10 jurors found the evidence 

against him persuasive. But a pair of jurors believed that the State of 

Louisiana had failed to prove Mr. Ramos’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt; they 

voted to acquit.” Id., 140 S.Ct. at 1394. Unlike Louisiana, it has long been 

settled in Pennsylvania that the verdict in a criminal trial must be unanimous. 

Commonwealth v. Jackson, 324 A.2d 350, 353 (Pa. 1974); Pa.R.Crim.P. 

648(B). In Ramos, Justice Gorsuch explained: 

In 48 States and federal court, a single juror’s vote to acquit is 

enough to prevent a conviction. But not in Louisiana. Along with 

Oregon, Louisiana has long punished people based on 10-to-2 

____________________________________________

1

In Appellant’s 2017 PCRA petition, he noted he first requested that the 

Dauphin County Prothonotary provide a copy of the verdict sheet on July 8, 

2014. The Prothonotary responded on July 14, 2014, indicating that the 

verdict sheet from 2002 could not be located. Appellant suggested that the 

lack of the verdict sheet not only proves the verdict was not unanimous but 

also proves fraud on the part of the court for imposing a sentence in absence 

of a unanimous verdict. See Pro Se PCRA Petition, 11/20/17. 
J-S04017-21

- 6 -

verdicts like the one here. So instead of the mistrial he would 

have received almost anywhere else, Mr. Ramos was sentenced 

to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Id. In Part IV-B-2 of the opinion, Justice Gorsuch noted the dissent’s concern 

relating to reversal of Ramos’s sentence, i.e., that defendants in Louisiana and 

Oregon “whose appeals are already complete might seek to challenge their 

nonunanimous convictions through collateral (i.e., habeas) review.” Id. (with 

three justices concurring and one justice concurring in the judgment). He 

continued: 

But again the worries outstrip the facts. Under Teague v. Lane, 

[489 U.S. 288 (1989) (plurality)], newly recognized rules of 

criminal procedure do not normally apply in collateral review. 

True, Teague left open the possibility of an exception for 

“watershed rules” “implicat[ing] the fundamental fairness [and 

accuracy] of the trial.” But, as this language suggests, Teague’s 

test is a demanding one, so much so that this Court has yet to 

announce a new rule of criminal procedure capable of meeting it. 

And the test is demanding by design, expressly calibrated to 

address the reliance interests States have in the finality of their 

criminal judgments.

Nor is the Teague question even before us. Whether the right 

to jury unanimity applies to cases on collateral review is a 

question for a future case where the parties will have a 

chance to brief the issue and we will benefit from their 

adversarial presentation. That litigation is sure to come, and 

will rightly take into account the States’ interest in the finality of 

their criminal convictions. In this way, Teague frees us to say 

what we know to be true about the rights of the accused under 

our Constitution today, while leaving questions about the reliance 

interest States possess in their final judgments for later 

proceedings crafted to account for them. It would hardly make 

sense to ignore that two-step process and count the State’s 

reliance interests in final judgments both here and again there. 

Certainly the dissent cites no authority for such double counting.
J-S04017-21

- 7 -

Id. at 1407 (with three justices concurring and one justice concurring in the 

judgment) (emphasis added; footnotes omitted). 

It is clear the United States Supreme Court did not hold Ramos to apply 

retroactively. Even if Ramos somehow supported Appellant’s substantive 

argument—and we do not suggest that it does, it does not assist him in 

overcoming the PCRA’s time bar under Section 9545(b)(1)(iii). Because 

Appellant has not pleaded and proved an exception to his facially untimely 

PCRA petition, this Court does not have jurisdiction to consider the merits, if 

any, of his argument.

Order affirmed. 

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 03/05/2021