J-S87026-16

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

PENNSYLVANIA

Appellee

v.

BRYANT MAURICE ASTLES

Appellant No. 651 MDA 2016

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Dated March 17, 2016

In the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County

Criminal Division at No(s): CP-40-0000965-2015

BEFORE: LAZARUS, J., SOLANO, J., and PLATT, J.*

MEMORANDUM BY SOLANO, J.: FILED JANUARY 24, 2017

Appellant, Bryant Maurice Astles, appeals from the judgment of 

sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty, on October 15, 2015, to one count 

of corrupting a minor in violation of 18 Pa.C.S. § 6301(a). Appellant 

challenges the lifetime registration requirement to which he agreed under 

the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9799.10–

9799.41 (SORNA). On the basis of our Supreme Court’s recent 

interpretation of SORNA in A.S. v. Pennsylvania State Police, 143 A.3d 

896 (Pa. 2016), and Commonwealth v. Lutz-Morrison, 143 A.3d 891 (Pa. 

2016), we vacate the lifetime registration portion of Appellant’s sentence 

____________________________________________

* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.
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and remand for imposition of a fifteen-year reporting requirement under 

SORNA.

The Commonwealth stated the factual basis for Appellant’s guilty plea 

as follows:

Offense date, August 16th of 2012. On various occasions 

between June 1st, 2012 and August 31, 2012, the defendant, 

being 18 years of age and upwards, corrupted or tended to 

corrupt the morals of a child under the age of 18 years, namely, 

a 15-year-old juvenile female by attempting to engage in a sex 

act with her.

N.T., 10/15/15, at 6. The Criminal Complaint stated that, according to the 

juvenile victim, Appellant raped her, and she subsequently learned she was 

pregnant and gave birth to a daughter. Criminal Complaint, 2/25/15, at 1-

2.1 

On March 17, 2016, after receipt of Appellant’s guilty plea, the trial 

court sentenced Appellant to 9 to 18 months’ incarceration. Consistent with 

the terms of Appellant’s negotiated plea, the court directed Appellant’s 

lifetime registration as a Tier III sex offender under SORNA.

SORNA requires persons convicted of certain sexual offenses to 

register with the Pennsylvania State Police. The statute “established a 

____________________________________________

1 On February 25, 2015, the Commonwealth charged Appellant with 

statutory sexual assault, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3122.1, but it amended the complaint 

on March 11, 2015 to withdraw the statutory sexual assault charge and add 

the felony corruption of minors charge, 18 Pa.C.S. § 6301(a), as part of 

Appellant’s negotiated plea. Criminal Complaint, 2/25/15; N.T., 10/15/15, 

at 2.
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three-tiered system for classifying offenses and their corresponding 

registration periods.” Lutz-Morrison, 143 A.3d at 892. “The tiers provide 

for registration periods of fifteen years (Tier I), twenty-five years (Tier II), 

or lifetime (Tier III), depending on the offense(s) and/or circumstances.” 

Id., citing 42 Pa.C.S. § 9799.15(a)(1)–(3). Under SORNA, corrupting a 

minor in violation of 18 Pa.C.S. §§ 6301(a) is a Tier I offense subject to a 

15-year registration requirement. See 42 Pa. C.S. § 9799.14(b)(8). However, 

if the defendant has “[t]wo or more convictions of offenses listed as Tier I or 

Tier II sexual offenses,” the defendant falls within Tier III and must register 

for life. Id. § 9799.14(d)(16). At the time Appellant was convicted in this 

case, he had one prior conviction for a Tier I sexual offense — indecent 

assault in violation of 18 Pa. C.S. § 3126(a). Order, 3/17/16; see 42 Pa. 

C.S. § 9799.14(b)(6) (making indecent assault a Tier I offense under 

SORNA). Accordingly, the trial court’s sentencing order included the lifetime 

registration requirement, with a notation on the order that read, “Tier I –

subsequent offense.” Order, 3/17/16.

Although Appellant agreed to lifetime registration as part of his plea, 

he filed this timely appeal, in which he states his single issue as follows:

Whether the Trial Court erred by classifying [Appellant] as a Tier 

III sexual offender, pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S. 9799.14(d)(16) 

(multiple convictions), and imposing a lifetime registration 

requirement, where the multiple offenses charged in this case 

are from the same course of conduct?
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Appellant’s Brief at 1. Appellant’s appeal forecast the Supreme Court’s 

interpretation of SORNA in A.S. and Lutz-Morrison, opinions that the 

Supreme Court issued on August 15, 2016. 

The question in Lutz-Morrison was whether the language in Section 

9799.14(d)(16) of SORNA — which provides that conviction of “[t]wo or 

more convictions of offenses listed as Tier I or Tier II sexual offenses” 

requires lifetime registration as a Tier III sexual offender under the statute 

— called for a Tier III classification even where the multiple convictions all 

were based on a single course of conduct. The defendant in Lutz-Morrison

was convicted of three counts of possession of child pornography on the 

basis of videos and images found at the same time on his computer and 

iPhone. 143 A.2d at 893-91. Possession of child pornography is a Tier I 

offense under SORNA, and because of the multiple counts, the defendant 

was classified as a Tier III offender and required to register for life. Id. at 

894. The Supreme Court reversed that aspect of the defendant’s sentence, 

holding:

[T]he statute, which sets forth a graduated (three-tier) scheme 

of registration, encompasses a recidivist philosophy. As such, 

the statute requires an act, a conviction, and a subsequent act to 

trigger lifetime registration for multiple offenses otherwise 

subject to a fifteen- or twenty-five-year period of registration.

Id. at 895. Under that analysis, the defendant’s multiple convictions of 

Tier I offenses based on his single course of conduct in possessing the child 
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pornography did not qualify for a Tier III classification under the statute.2

Appellant contends that, like the defendants in A.S. and LutzMorrison, he was convicted of multiple Tier I offenses that arise out of a 

single course of conduct, and that it therefore was error to require his 

lifetime registration as a Tier III sexual offender. Resolution of this 

contention requires that we determine whether Appellant’s earlier conviction 

of indecent assault in violation of 18 Pa. C.S. § 3126(a) arose from the same 

course of conduct as that giving rise to his conviction in this case for 

corrupting a minor in violation of 18 Pa.C.S. §§ 6301(a). We conclude that 

it did.

Both convictions relate to events in the summer of 2012 involving 

Appellant and the same victim. Appellant’s conviction of indecent assault 

was based on an incident that summer, in which Appellant touched the 

victim’s breasts. N.T., 10/6/15,3at 2-4; Criminal Complaint, 9/12/12, at 2. 

____________________________________________

2 A.S. presented the same issue under a predecessor to the SORNA statute, 

and the Court decided both A.S. and Lutz-Morrison together and 

interpreted the two statutes consistently. In A.S., the defendant was 

convicted of sexual abuse of a child and unlawful contact with a child as a 

result of his taking and transmission of sexually explicit photographs of a girl 

under 16. 143 A.3d at 899. The Court concluded that because the crimes 

“arose out of the same course of conduct,” they did not give rise to a Tier III 

classification. Id. at 905.

3 The transcript citations to October 6, 2015 reference the pre-trial hearing; 

the transcript citations to October 15, 2015 reference the plea hearing.
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Appellant was charged with that assault on September 12, 2012, and he 

pleaded guilty on June 18, 2013. 

The corruption charge at issue in this appeal arose from events that 

occurred during the same time period in 2012, when Appellant had sexual 

intercourse with the same victim without her consent. Although this crime 

occurred in 2012, it was not charged until February 25, 2015, after the 

victim came forward with additional information on what had happened that 

summer. In explaining the two-and-a-half year time lapse between the 

filing of the two charges, the second Criminal Complaint explained:

The victim was asked why she was able to talk about being 

sexually assaulted and she accredited the years of therapy, 

support and treatment she received that gave her the courage to 

come forward about everything that happened that night.

Criminal Complaint, 2/25/15, at 2.

The two criminal complaints that underlie Appellant’s convictions each 

allege events that occurred with the same victim in the summer of 2012. 

See Criminal Complaint, 2/25/15; Criminal Complaint, 9/12/12. In 

discussing the separate charges, the trial court stated, “I don’t think there’s 

any question it’s the same criminal episode.” N.T., 10/3/15, at 3. The 

Commonwealth agreed, responding, “It’s the same criminal episode, 

however, the indecent assault that the defendant had plead guilty to in the 

first prosecution . . . was indecent for contact with the victim’s breast 

without her consent, the charge the Commonwealth originally brought. And 

I understand the criminal information in the [second] case is different.” Id. 
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at 4. Because the two convictions stemmed from the same course of

conduct, they cannot give rise to a Tier III classification. In the words of 

Lutz-Morrison, there was not an “an act, a conviction, and a subsequent 

act,” the sequence needed to trigger lifetime registration for multiple 

offenses under SORNA. See 143 A.2d at 895.

We note that, unlike the defendants in A.S. and Lutz-Morrison, who 

entered open guilty pleas, Appellant agreed to the lifetime registration when 

he entered his negotiated guilty plea in this case. However, the fact that 

Appellant agreed to lifetime registration as part of his plea on October 15, 

2015 is not dispositive of our analysis, as the Supreme Court has construed 

the statute to negate the propriety of such lifetime registration in these 

circumstances. Within his negotiated plea, Appellant could not agree to a 

sentence that is not authorized under the statute. See, e.g.,

Commonwealth v. Kinnan, 71 A.3d 983 (Pa. Super. 2013) (vacating 

judgment of sentence and remanding for resentencing where, although 

defendant entered a negotiated guilty plea, the Superior Court determined 

that the restitution component of defendant’s sentence was improper). 

Accordingly, with the benefit of the Supreme Court’s recent statutory 

construction, we are compelled to recognize the impropriety of Appellant’s 

lifetime registration. We therefore vacate the lifetime registration portion of 

Appellant’s sentence and remand for imposition of a fifteen-year reporting 

requirement under SORNA. In all other respects, Appellant’s judgment of 

sentence is affirmed.
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Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 1/24/2017