J-S08016-15

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

PENNSYLVANIA

Appellee

v.

ERIC COFFIELD

Appellant No. 1518 EDA 2014

Appeal from the PCRA Order of April 22, 2014

In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County

Criminal Division at No.: CP-51-CR-027251-1991

BEFORE: DONOHUE, J., WECHT, J., and JENKINS, J.

MEMORANDUM BY WECHT, J.: FILED MARCH 09, 2015

Eric Coffield appeals the April 22, 2014 order denying relief upon 

Coffield’s petition under the Post-Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”), 42 Pa.C.S. 

§§ 9541, et seq. We conclude that the PCRA court correctly determined that 

Coffield’s petition was filed outside the PCRA’s time limit, leaving the PCRA 

court without jurisdiction to address the substantive allegations contained in 

that petition. We affirm.

In light of our disposition, we need not embellish the following brief 

account of the factual history underlying this case, which we provided on 

another occasion when Coffield appeared before this Court:

Coffield’s conviction arose out of an incident that occurred on 

January 4, 1991. Coffield was observed by Philadelphia police 

officers operating a stolen vehicle at a high rate of speed along 

Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While 

attempting to elude the police, Coffield drove recklessly and in 

excess of 100 miles per hour. Meanwhile, the passengers in the 

stolen vehicle, who were also involved in the theft of the 
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automobile, pleaded with Coffield to slow down and stop the car. 

He ignored their requests and told them to shut up. Coffield 

eventually lost control of the car and crashed into two trees 

killing the front seat passenger and seriously injuring the two 

back seat passengers.

On September 17, 1991, Coffield was found guilty, after a bench 

trial, of murder in the third degree, [18 Pa.C.S. § 2502(c),] two 

(2) counts each of simple assault[, 18 Pa.C.S. § 2701(a),] and 

aggravated assault[, 18 Pa.C.S. § 2702(a)], and one (1) count 

each of theft [by unlawful taking, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3921(a),] and 

receiving stolen property[, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3925(a)]. Post-trial 

motions were filed, new counsel was appointed[,] and 

supplemental post-trial motions then were filed. On March 4, 

1993, the post-trial motions were denied and Coffield was 

sentenced to not less than ten (10) nor more than twenty (20) 

years for his murder conviction. He also received consecutive 

sentences of not less than ten (10) nor more than twenty (20) 

years for each aggravated assault conviction. Furthermore a 

consecutive sentence of not less than two and one[ ]half (2 1⁄2) 

nor more than five (5) years was imposed for the theft 

conviction.1 The aggregate sentence imposed was not less than 

thirty-two and one half (32 1⁄2) nor more than sixty-five (65) 

years’ imprisonment.

____________________

1 The sentence for receiving stolen property was 

suspended.

Coffield filed a motion for modification of sentence that was 

subsequently denied. Thereafter, he filed an appeal with this 

Court alleging, among other things, that the trial court abused 

its discretion by imposing sentences on the aggravated assault[] 

and theft convictions outside the sentencing guidelines without 

stating the applicable sentencing ranges and the reasons for the 

deviation. This Court found that the trial court failed to state the 

applicable sentencing ranges, the prior record scores, and the 

reasons for deviating from the sentencing guideline ranges. 

Consequently, this Court vacated the judgment of sentence with 

respect to the aggravated assaults and the theft convictions and 

remanded for re-sentencing. Commonwealth v. Coffield, 

641 A.2d 1220 (Pa. Super. 1993) (No. 944 Philadelphia 1993, 

unpublished memorandum, filed 12/28/93). On January 21, 

1994, Coffield filed a petition for allowance of appeal with the 
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Supreme Court that was subsequently denied on September 12, 

1994. Commonwealth v. Coffield, 542 Pa. 657, 668 A.2d 

1122 (1994) (No. 51 E.D. Allocatur Docket 1994, 9/12/94).

Commonwealth v. Coffield, 2409 Phila. 1997, slip op. at 1-3 (Pa. Super. 

Dec. 7, 1998) (unpublished memorandum).

On June 6, 1997, the trial court convened a re-sentencing hearing. At 

that hearing, Coffield addressed the court. The trial court acknowledged, 

but was unimpressed by, Coffield’s expression of remorse. After reviewing 

the applicable sentencing guidelines, and after underscoring the 

egregiousness of Coffield’s conduct and its tragic results, the trial court 

imposed the same sentence that it imposed in the first sentencing 

proceeding. Coffield appealed. In a memorandum entered on December 7, 

1998, this Court affirmed Coffield’s judgment of sentence. Id. Our 

Supreme Court denied allowance of appeal on May 25, 1999. 

Commonwealth v. Coffield, 739 A.2d 540 (Pa. 1999) (per curiam).

On September 20, 1999, Coffield filed his first PCRA petition. 

Appointed counsel filed an amended petition. The PCRA court denied relief 

on September 18, 2001, and Coffield filed no appeal. On February 4, 2002, 

Coffield filed a second PCRA petition. On May 30, 2003, the PCRA court 

dismissed Coffield’s petition as untimely. Coffield appealed and we affirmed. 

Commonwealth v. Coffield, 1880 EDA 2003 (Pa. Super. Feb. 18, 2004) 

(unpublished judgment order). Therein, we noted that Coffield’s judgment 

of sentence became final for purposes of the PCRA’s time limit on August 23, 

1999. Id. slip op. at 2. Because Coffield had not filed his PCRA petition by 
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August 23, 2000, one year after his judgment of sentence became final, and 

failed successfully to invoke one of the statutory exceptions to the PCRA 

court’s one-year time limit, we affirmed the PCRA court’s determination that 

his petition was untimely. Id. Coffield filed a petition for allowance of 

appeal with our Supreme Court, which denied review on August 5, 2004. 

Commonwealth v. Coffield, 856 A.2d 831 (Pa. 2004) (per curiam).

Coffield filed the instant PCRA petition, his third, on July 7, 2011. 

Counsel was appointed and filed an amended PCRA petition, a motion for 

PCRA discovery, and a Motion for funds to hire an investigator. PCRA Court 

Opinion (“P.C.O.”), 9/23/2014, at 3. The PCRA court held hearings on 

February 28 and again on April 11, 2014. During the interim, the court filed 

its notice of intent to dismiss pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907. On March 18, 

2014, Coffield filed a response to the PCRA court’s Rule 907 notice. On April 

22, 2014, following the April 11, 2014 hearing, the PCRA court dismissed the 

petition as untimely under the PCRA’s time limits.1 

On May 15, 2014, Coffield timely filed a notice of appeal from the 

PCRA court’s order. On July 10, 2014, the PCRA court entered an order 

directing Coffield to file a concise statement of the errors complained of on 

____________________________________________

1 Coffield spends a great deal of time disputing what it treats as the 

PCRA court’s findings regarding the merits of the substantive issues raised in 

the instant petition. However, on a fair reading of its opinion, it is clear that 

the PCRA court touched upon those arguments only insofar as they informed 

the timeliness inquiry.
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appeal pursuant to Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b). Coffield timely complied,2and the 

PCRA court filed its Rule 1925(a) opinion on September 23, 2014, ripening 

this case for our review.

In dismissing Coffield’s third PCRA petition as untimely, the PCRA court 

necessarily determined that it lacked jurisdiction to review the claims set 

forth in that petition. See Commonwealth v. Leggett, 16 A.3d 1144, 

1145 (Pa. Super. 2011). Consequently, we must begin by reviewing the 

jurisdictional question.3 

It is well-established that the PCRA time limits are jurisdictional, and 

must be strictly construed, regardless of the potential merit of the claims 

asserted. Leggett, 16 A.3d at 1145 (Pa. Super. 2011); Commonwealth v. 

Murray, 753 A.2d 201, 202-03 (Pa. 2000), abrogated on other grounds, 

943 A.2d 264 (Pa. 2008). “[N]o court may properly disregard or alter [these 

filing requirements] in order to reach the merits of the claims raised in a 

PCRA petition that is filed in an untimely manner.” Murray, 753 A.2d 

____________________________________________

2 About this statement, the PCRA court observed that the statement was 

“anything but terse. In fact, it’s more akin to a full-on, florid appellate 

brief—and an improper one at that.” P.C.O. at 4 n.2. The court went on to 

note that the statement spans eleven unnumbered and single-spaced pages 

in a small font.

3 We review a PCRA court’s ruling to determine whether it is supported 

by the evidence of record and is free of legal error. Commonwealth v. 

Garcia, 23 A.3d 1059, 1061 (Pa. Super. 2011).
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at 203; see Commonwealth v. Gamboa-Taylor, 753 A.2d 780, 783 

(Pa. 2000).

Despite facial untimeliness, a tardy PCRA petition nonetheless will be 

considered timely if (but only if) the petitioner pleads and proves one of the 

three exceptions to the one-year time limit enumerated in 

subsection 9545(b) of the PCRA, which provides as follows:

(1) Any petition under this subchapter, including a second or 

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

judgment becomes final, unless the petition alleges and the 

petitioner proves that:

(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.

(2) Any petition invoking an exception provided in 

paragraph (1) shall be filed within 60 days of the date the claim 

could have been presented.

42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b). 

When an appellant files a facially untimely petition under the PCRA, 

and fails to plead and prove one or more of the exceptions to the PCRA’s 

one-year jurisdictional time limit, the petition is untimely and we must deny 
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the appellant relief. Gamboa-Taylor, 753 A.2d at 783. Moreover, as 

reflected in the plain language of section 9545, even when one of the 

exceptions may apply to a given petition, it will excuse the untimeliness only 

if the petition was filed within sixty days of the date that the conditions 

underlying the exception came to light. Id. at 784.

Coffield’s brief contains no statement of the questions involved, as 

required by Pa.R.A.P. 2116. In lieu of such a statement, we accept as 

exhausting all issues properly argued the following statement that introduces 

the argument section of Coffield’s brief:

Coffield’s case, at this point, is about three things: (1) trial 

counsel’s objectively unreasonable advice to Coffield to reject 

the Commonwealth’s 7 1/2 to 15[-]year plea deal and appellate 

counsel’s objectively unreasonable decision not to challenge trial 

counsel’s decision-making on direct appeal; (2) initial-review 

PCRA counsel’s pathetic representation of Coffield and his 

inexcusable abandonment of Coffield once the PCRA court 

dismissed his first (timely) PCRA petition; and (3) the 

recognition that, in order for PCRA petitioners to have a fair 

opportunity to vindicate their Sixth Amendment right to effective 

trial counsel and Due Process right to effective appellate counsel, 

this Court must raise the bar as to what’s expected from initialreview PCRA counsel. 

Brief for Coffield at 23. Coffield admits the untimeliness of his petition and 

that none of the subsection 9545(b) exceptions apply to rectify that 

jurisdictional flaw. See Brief for Coffield at 20-21; P.C.O. at 6 (“Here, 

[Coffield] concedes that his petition is untimely, and at the hearings below, 

admitted that no exception applies.” (emphasis in original)).
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In an effort to avoid the consequences of this untimeliness, Coffield 

frames what he styles an as-applied challenge to the constitutionality of the 

PCRA’s one-year time limit under the circumstances of this case:

Coffield’s third PCRA petition is untimely, but the PCRA’s oneyear limitations period and exceptions to the limitations period 

are not applicable because his initial-review PCRA proceedings 

were fundamentally unfair[,] violating his state and federal 

constitutional right to a fundamentally fair PCRA proceeding and 

effective assistance of initial-review PCRA counsel. 

First, Coffield’s first PCRA petition was timely and, although 

inartfully pled, it contained the meritorious trial and appellate 

counsel ineffectiveness claims discussed supra. It also contained 

other claims requiring investigation . . . .

Second, although initial-review PCRA counsel, Steve Laver, filed 

an amended petition, the amended petition simply restated, 

nearly verbatim, the claims Coffield raised in his pro se petition; 

in other words, Laver did not (1) thoroughly or meaningfully 

“explore” the legal issues raised by Coffield, (2) attempt to 

develop facts to meaningfully and adequately determine the 

merits of Coffield’s legal claims, or (3) coherently present, in a 

persuasive narrative, the facts supporting Coffield’s legal claims.

Third, after the PCRA court dismissed Coffield’s first timely 

petition, Laver abandoned Coffield and did not perfect his 

appeal; likewise, Laver never filed a formal motion to 

withdraw . . . .

Brief for Coffield at 30-31. 

In support of his “as applied” constitutional challenge, Coffield relies 

upon Commonwealth v. Bennett, 930 A.2d 1264, 1273 (Pa. 2007), and 

Commonwealth v. Brown, 943 A.2d 264 (Pa. 2008). However, neither 

Bennett nor Brown is of any benefit to Coffield’s argument. In Bennett, 

our Supreme Court recognized that counsel constructively abandons a 
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defendant when he fails to file a requested appeal, and that such 

abandonment is per se prejudicial for purposes of evaluating the 

constitutional effectiveness of counsel. See 930 A.2d at 1273. Critically, 

though, the Court’s grant of relief in Bennett depended in part on what it 

found to be Bennett’s diligence under the circumstances of that case; the 

Court emphasized that a petitioner bears the burden of establishing “that the 

[after-discovered] facts were ‘unknown’ to him and that he could not 

uncover them with the exercise of ‘due diligence.’” Id. at 1274. Thus, 

Bennett did not suggest that circumstances such as those presented in this 

case somehow relieved the petitioner of the PCRA’s strictures generally.

Coffield cites Brown for the general proposition that our Supreme 

Court “has recognized the potential availability of an as-applied 

constitutional challenge to the application of the PCRA’s time restriction.” 

See Brown, 943 A.2d at 268 n.4 (citing Bennett, supra; Commonwealth 

v. Abu-Salaam, 812 A.2d 497, 501 (Pa. 2002)). However, the Brown

Court did not address the application of that principle to the case then at bar 

because the petitioner had failed to present any argument to that effect. Id.

In Abu-Salaam, the Court did not grant relief on such an as-applied 

constitutional challenge outside the PCRA’s requirements. Reinforcing this 

fact, the Court expressly based its lengthy analysis upon the new 

constitutional rule exception to the PCRA rather than leaving the confines of 

the PCRA entirely for purposes of the constitutional argument presented. 

812 A.2d at 499-502. As in Bennett and Brown, nothing in Abu-Salaam
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established any basis for evaluating the constitutional claims raised therein 

without regard for the PCRA’s jurisdictional requirements.

Later in his brief, Coffield mounts an impressive recitation of general 

constitutional requirements for the performance of trial, appellate, and 

collateral relief counsel. Brief for Coffield at 31-34. None of these cases 

vitiates the application of the PCRA generally or of the due diligence 

requirement specifically to establish an entitlement to relief based upon a 

facially untimely petition pursuant to the after-discovered fact exception. 

Furthermore, Coffield offers no nexus between the principles articulated in 

the many federal and Pennsylvania precedents he cites and the facts of his 

case to establish that this case falls outside the ambit of the PCRA and is 

excused from the jurisdictional requirements associated with Pennsylvania’s 

framework for collateral relief under the PCRA.

In circumstances materially similar to those presented in the instant 

case, this Court held that the petitioner is not relieved of the obligation to 

plead the alleged violation within sixty days of its discovery, as required 

generally by PCRA subsection 9545(b)(2):

In his counseled PCRA petition, Appellant sought an equitable 

exception to the time-bar based upon prior appeal counsel’s 

failure to file an appellate brief. Specifically, Appellant 

contended that he asked his attorney to file an appellate brief 

from the denial of his first PCRA petition, the attorney assured 

him he would file the brief, the attorney did not file the brief, 

and thereafter, this Court dismissed Appellant’s appeal. In 

Bennett, supra, the Supreme Court recently held that such a 

claim falls within the ambit of Subsection 9545(b)(1)(ii)’s 

exception [i.e., after-discovered facts] since “the facts upon 
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which the claim is predicated could not have been ascertained by 

the exercise of due diligence.” However, in Bennett, the 

Supreme Court also reiterated that, before a petitioner may 

benefit from Subsection 9545(b)(1)(ii)’s exception, the petitioner 

must plead [that] he filed his PCRA petition within sixty days of 

the date it could have been presented; that is, he must plead 

[that] he filed the petition within sixty days of when he 

discovered this Court dismissed his first PCRA appeal. Id.

at 1272 n.11.

Commonwealth v. Geer, 936 A.2d 1075, 1077-78 (Pa. Super. 2007) 

(citations modified; footnotes omitted). In Geer, because the appellant did 

not allege that he presented his claim within sixty days of when he 

discovered it, we found that he did not qualify for the after-discovered fact 

exception. Consequently, the petition was untimely and no relief was due.

Here, Coffield simply does not plead that he filed his third PCRA 

petition within sixty days of discovering that first PCRA counsel improperly 

failed to file a requested appeal, nor could he do so credibly. The PCRA 

court denied Coffield’s first PCRA petition on September 18, 2001. Coffield 

filed his third petition nearly ten years later, on July 7, 2011. Even if there 

was no intervening procedural history, it would entirely beggar belief that he 

did not learn until over nine years after the denial of his first PCRA petition 

that counsel had failed to file a requested appeal from the denial of that 

petition. Moreover, on February 4, 2002, in the interim, Coffield filed a 

second PCRA petition. Therein, he expressly raised the issue of first PCRA 

counsel’s failure to file an appeal. See, e.g., Response to Notice of Intent to 

Dismiss Under Pa.R.Crim.P. 907 or Alternatively, Amended Post-Conviction 

Petition with Consolidated Memorandum of Law, 1/21/2003, at 3 ¶¶11-13. 
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Thus, Coffield plainly was aware of that alleged failure in early 2002, if not 

much earlier. Consequently, he does not qualify for the after-discovered fact 

exception to the PCRA’s timeliness requirements, and the PCRA court 

correctly concluded that it lacked jurisdiction over the instant petition.

Order affirmed.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 3/9/2015