Opinion ID: 4535378
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Underlying events, trial, and direct appeal

Text: In 2002, the victim in the present case, Walter Smith, told police that Clinton Robinson had killed Margaret Thomas. Later that year, Smith himself was killed when he was shot twelve times outside a Philadelphia bar. Based on ballistics evidence, the police concluded that multiple individuals had acted in concert to kill Smith. Police also recovered a red baseball cap, which was located in the middle of the street approximately nine feet from Smith’s body. Photos of the scene only showed this one cap. The cap was assigned property receipt number 9001079.1 Shortly after the incident, Debbie Williams, a friend of Smith’s who was with him on the night in question, went to the police station and was questioned by the assigned detective, James Burns. She provided a statement indicating the following. Smith and Ms. Williams made a brief stop at a bar in Philadelphia during the early morning hours of December 15, 2002. When they left, there were seven to ten persons on the sidewalk or street outside the bar. As she and Smith went to get into Smith’s van, she walked to the passenger door while Smith walked around to the driver’s side. Just then, a young black male wearing a red article of clothing and a baseball cap ran past her in front of the van toward Smith. Shots rang out, whereupon Ms. Williams ducked down and did not see the actual shooting. When the shots began, the individuals outside the bar ran away toward Somerset Street. After the gunshots ceased, Ms. Williams saw the same person who had run past her flee the scene, also in the direction of Somerset Street.2 Ms. Williams went to where Smith’s body was lying in the street and picked up Smith’s black baseball cap, which had a bullet hole in it. The police arrived shortly thereafter and transported her to the police station. 1 An officer explained at trial that a property receipt is a typed report concerning an item of evidence, with a unique number on it. The number then functions as a computer database key for the police to view information about the item, such as where it came from, which officer obtained it, where it is currently stored, and any data developed through forensic analysis. See N.T., June 20, 2007, at 130. 2 Somerset Street is near the intersection where the bar was located. At trial Ms. Williams added that the red baseball cap’s location after the shooting was also in the direction of Somerset Street from Smith’s body. See N.T., June 20, 2007, at 168. [J-65-2019] - 2 At the station, Ms. Williams gave the black cap to Detective Burns and explained that Smith had been wearing it when he was shot. This cap was assigned property receipt number 2425291, and was submitted to the crime lab for testing. The testing revealed the presence of Smith’s blood under the brim. The case remained unsolved until 2005, when Bryant Younger, a jailhouse informant who was under indictment on a federal narcotics offense, told police he had overheard Appellant make statements implicating himself in Smith’s murder. Younger admittedly supplied this information solely in hopes of obtaining leniency when he was sentenced in federal court. See N.T., June 20, 2007, at 85-86 (reflecting the Commonwealth’s acknowledgement in this regard); see also id. at 96-97, 100, 104, 110112 (recording Younger’s testimony that this was his sole motive). Regardless, in light of the information, the police obtained a sample of Appellant’s DNA and submitted it together with the red cap for testing. The testing revealed that Appellant was a contributor to the DNA in the sweatband of the red cap. Thereafter, the Commonwealth proceeded on the understanding that there was only one baseball cap involved – the red one – and that it contained both Smith’s blood and Appellant’s DNA. In fact, as explained, the red cap had Appellant’s DNA, whereas the black cap contained Smith’s blood; neither cap had DNA from both individuals. Appellant was ultimately arrested and charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy, and possessing an instrument of crime. The matter went to trial in June 2007 as a capital case. The Commonwealth’s theory as to motive was that Appellant had participated in killing Smith to prevent him from testifying against Clinton Robinson in the Margaret Thomas homicide case. The evidence tended to show that Appellant was a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of Robinson’s. Moreover, one of the statements Younger claimed to have overheard [J-65-2019] - 3 included a suggestion by Appellant that if it were not for his (Appellant’s) actions, Robinson would not be getting out of jail. At trial, the Commonwealth’s crucial piece of physical evidence was the red baseball cap. Unaware of its mistake regarding its possession of two caps from the crime scene rather than one – and unaware that there was no evidence suggesting Smith’s blood was on the red cap – the prosecuting attorney repeatedly indicated in his opening statement that Appellant “got in real close” to shoot Smith essentially at point blank range, N.T., June 20, 2007, at 78, 79, 87, thus accounting for Smith’s blood supposedly being on the underside of the red cap’s brim. The prosecutor continued: So now with, I would submit, as certain evidence as can you [sic] find we know that that hat that was left at that scene in the middle of the street has Kareem Johnson’s sweat on it and has Walter Smith’s blood on it. Based on that evidence, we come to trial. Id. at 88 (emphasis added). In support of the Commonwealth’s position at trial that Appellant was one of the shooters and he shot Smith at close range, the lead crime-scene investigator, Officer William Trenwith, testified that when he recovered the red cap from the scene he saw drops of fresh blood underneath the cap’s brim. See id. at 116. The officer also noted that he had never seen a case in which blood had spattered the distance from Smith’s body to where the red cap was found at the scene – suggesting that the person who wore the cap had fired his weapon significantly closer to Smith than where the cap was located. The Commonwealth also presented the testimony of Lori Wisniewski, the forensic scientist who performed the DNA testing. She stated that Walter Smith’s blood and Appellant’s DNA were both found on “the hat.” N.T., June 21, 2007, at 160-164.3 3 Although the Commonwealth was in possession of some forensic evidence, it did not, prior to trial, request a criminalistics report, which would have reflected a list of the items tested and the results of those tests. See infra note 5 and associated text. [J-65-2019] - 4 As well, the Commonwealth elicited testimony from Bryant Younger, who recounted Appellant’s jailhouse statements. Appellant never challenged the underlying premise that there was only one hat, and both parties construed the evidence as relating solely to the red cap. Accord Brief for Commonwealth at 5.4 Thus, in his summation Appellant was relegated to arguing that, despite the presence of both men’s DNA on the same hat, no eyewitness saw Appellant wear the hat at or near the time of the killing or otherwise connected him with the crime scene, see N.T., June 22, 2007, at 23-24, 42-45; there were other contributors to the DNA in the hat’s sweatband, see id. at 55-56; and, in any event, the DNA match between the cap’s sweatband and the sample provided by Appellant was equivocal. See id. at 38, 40. In his closing argument, the prosecutor took issue with the concept that the DNA match was equivocal, noting that, per Ms. Wisniewski’s explanation, the odds of the DNA coming from someone other than Appellant were too small to be realistic. See id. at 60. Responding to Appellant’s observation that no eyewitness identified Appellant as the shooter or even stated that the killer wore the red cap, he continued: Do you know who says the killer wore the hat? Walter Smith says the killer wore the hat. He says it with his blood. There is no other way Walter Smith’s blood could have gotten on the underside of this hat . . . unless the person who killed Walter Smith was standing close to him while he shot and killed him . . .. So once you know that, we know this: The killer wore that hat. . . . 4 As noted, in Ms. Williams’ statement, which the Commonwealth caused to be read for the jury, she explained that she picked Smith’s hat up from the street after the shooting. See N.T., June 20, 2007, at 178, 226. For reasons that remain unclear, however, this too apparently did not give rise to a suspicion by anyone at trial that there might be two hats involved. [J-65-2019] - 5 This is the killer’s hat. This is the killer’s hat. The crime scene tells you that. The physical evidence tells you that. . . . Physical evidence has no bias. Physical evidence cannot lie. . . . It is just out there. It is there and it says what it says. . . . This overwhelming physical evidence says that killer’s hat was left out on the scene. . . . DNA evidence . . . says, hey, this is Kareem Johnson’s sweat on the sweatband, he is the major contributor, the very hat that has Walter Smith’s blood on the brim. Id. at 66-68, 89 (emphasis added). The jury convicted Appellant on all counts and set the penalty at death. This Court affirmed the judgment of sentence on direct appeal. See Commonwealth v. Johnson, 604 Pa. 176, 197, 985 A.2d 915, 928 (2009). B. Post-conviction relief and subsequent pre-trial motions Appellant filed a counseled, amended petition under the Post Conviction Relief Act. See 42 Pa.C.S. §§9541-9546 (“PCRA”). Responding to a defense open-records request, Gamal Emira of the criminalistics lab generated a forensics report in 2011, reflecting that two hats, a red one and a black one – each with a distinct property receipt number – had been analyzed in connection with the Commonwealth’s case, and that Smith’s blood was only found on the black hat.5 The Commonwealth thereafter agreed that Appellant was entitled to a new trial, and the court entered an order to that effect in April 2015. The Commonwealth later withdrew its notice of intent to seek the death penalty, making this a non-capital case going forward. 5 The criminalistics lab is a police laboratory that analyzes items of physical evidence through DNA testing and other scientific processes. It communicates test results and generates reports as requested by the Commonwealth or by a defense attorney. See N.T., June 20, 2007, at 87; N.T., June 21, 2007, at 144; N.T., Oct. 12, 2012, at 4-5; see also N.T., Jan. 27, 2016, at 134-35 (discussing defense-initiated requests). [J-65-2019] - 6 Meanwhile, Appellant filed a supplemental discovery motion, to which he attached the 2011 criminalistics report by Gamal Emira. The court held a hearing on the motion that spanned several days in late 2015 and early 2016. During the hearing, the court allowed Appellant to develop evidence to support a potential motion to bar retrial based on double-jeopardy principles as reflected in, inter alia, the state Charter. See PA. CONST. art. 1, §10 (“[N]o person shall, for the same offense, be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb[.]”). Thus, Appellant called as witnesses several individuals who were involved with the Commonwealth’s presentation of the case at the 2007 trial or who had represented the Commonwealth in post-conviction proceedings. These included: Officer Trenwith; Detective Burns; Lori Wisniewski (whose name had by then been changed to Lori Citino); Gamal Emira; Attorney Michael Barry, who represented the Commonwealth at trial; and Attorney Tracey Kavanagh, who represented the Commonwealth during post-conviction proceedings. In questioning these witnesses, Appellant was able to uncover in some detail the extent of the Commonwealth’s mishandling of the physical and DNA evidence during his trial. Of particular note, the Commonwealth misunderstood its own evidence and conflated the findings relating to the red and black caps. Although separate property receipt numbers had been assigned to the two hats, this did not prompt the Commonwealth to investigate whether its trial witnesses were discussing two distinct caps – or, alternatively, why a single red cap was associated with multiple property receipts. Even the Commonwealth’s forensic scientists who authored, or supervised generation of, the scientific reports did not realize at trial that there were two caps involved. Further, Officer Trenwith, who processed the crime scene and who testified as a fact witness at trial – indicating that he personally saw fresh drops of blood on the red [J-65-2019] - 7 cap – noted during the hearing on the supplemental discovery motion that his trial testimony concerning the red cap was based on an assumption: Q. Did it occur to you that you were testifying about something that you had not documented in any of your reports? A. When – when I testified, I was going on the assumption, which I shouldn’t have done, that there was, in fact, blood on it, that’s why I said it. But as far as my report is concerned, it does not state that there was actual drops of blood. N.T., Jan. 26, 2016, at 37 (emphasis added). The officer’s assumption in this regard appears to have stemmed from his having heard from a DNA scientist at the time of the preliminary hearing that blood stains were found on a hat (in reality, the black hat). See, e.g., id. at 14-16, 22. Still, this did not account for the officer’s description at trial that the blood drops were located underneath the brim of the hat, that the hat was the red one, that he personally saw the blood drops, and that they appeared to be fresh when he arrived at the crime scene. See N.T., June 20, 2007, at 116. Moreover, none of the photos taken by the officer or his crime-scene partner showed the underside of the red hat’s brim. See N.T., Jan. 27, 2016, at 115. In light of all of the evidence adduced at the hearing, Appellant moved to bar retrial. The court heard oral argument on the motion in March 2016. During Appellant’s portion of the argument – which took the form of a back-and-forth conversation with the court – Appellant highlighted the harm caused by the factually inaccurate trial testimony concerning fresh drops of blood under the brim of the red hat. See N.T., Mar. 3, 2016, at 10. The court responded by expressing that it was unfathomable to me to believe that what Officer Trenwith saw on the hat were, quote, fresh drops of blood. It’s unfathomable not only because it’s not referred to on the receipt that he made out, it’s unfathomable because here is an experienced crime scene investigator who’s taking pictures, which include pictures of the hat – at every point where there’s a picture of [J-65-2019] - 8 the hat taken, the hat is in the position it was on the street, brim down. If you’re a first-year investigator and you have seen fresh drops of blood on the hat, you’re going to at least in one picture flip the hat over and make sure there’s a picture of that. Id. at 10-11. Appellant also summarized the mistakes made by Detective Burns, Attorney Barry, and others associated with the prosecution. He observed that they all made essentially the same error in conflating the two hats, notwithstanding that the property receipt numbers were different on the papers showing the lab results for the two hats, and that the Commonwealth possessed all of the physical evidence and the results of the forensic testing supplied by the criminalistics lab. Appellant argued that, whether those errors reflected an intentional subversion of the truth-determining process, or mere recklessness, they led to Appellant being confined on death row for nine years based on a trial that the Commonwealth later conceded was constitutionally inadequate. He urged that double jeopardy norms should be construed to preclude retrial in such circumstances, particularly as the Commonwealth had seen fit to try a capital case based on DNA evidence without ordering a criminalistics report – which would have alerted the prosecution to the fact that two hats were involved. See id. at 15-19. For its part, the Commonwealth admitted that it had made substantial errors during the trial. It argued, however, that retrial should not be barred because it did not act in bad faith and any subversion of the truth-determining process was unintentional. In this regard, it observed that at trial the discrepancies it overlooked were in plain view of the defense as well, and defense counsel did not notice the error concerning the existence of two caps. Thus, the Commonwealth stressed, the mistakes it made did not reflect an affirmative intent on its part, or a conspiracy by government actors, to conceal material information from the defense. See id. at 22-28. [J-65-2019] - 9 In ruling from the bench, the common pleas court expressed that it was “more than negligence” that the Commonwealth took a capital case to trial “without even awaiting a full criminalistics DNA analysis.” The court characterized the prosecution’s handling of the evidence as “extremely negligent, perhaps even reckless.” It added that the Commonwealth’s subsequent “exaggeration” of that evidence at trial was “intolerable.” Id. at 38-40. Addressing Officer Trenwith, who was present in court for the ruling, see id. at 11, the court continued: I am 100 percent certain, sir, that you did not see, when you first looked at that cap, what you really or reasonably thought were, quote, fresh drops of blood, unquote, because I know your work. And I know that there would have been a lot more evidence with regard to that cap and a lot more detail in the property receipt if you actually thought at the time that that’s what you had seen. But I absolutely do believe that at the time of the preliminary hearing, it’s extremely possible that no one, not Officer Trenwith, certainly not Assistant District Attorney Barry, understood that there were two separate hats. Id. at 38-39. In the end, while describing the trial as a “farce,” the court nonetheless credited Mr. Barry’s testimony to the effect that the Commonwealth’s myriad errors did not reflect bad faith or intentional misconduct. The court concluded that to turn this gross series of almost unimaginable mistakes by experienced police officers and an experienced prosecutor into the kind of bad faith intentional misconduct that would permit a judge to bar further prosecution I would have to disbelieve completely all of Mr. Barry’s testimony about what he did, what he didn’t do, why he did what he did, why he didn’t do what he didn’t do. On the contrary, I find his testimony to have been completely credible. I find that an experienced . . . prosecutor made an almost unimaginable mistake, that it was a mistake which dovetailed with other mistakes that [J-65-2019] - 10 had been made by the officers and the detective in the case, and it produced a trial that was a farce. The remedy in Pennsylvania for a trial that was a farce, generally, is a new trial. Prosecution . . . is barred under Pennsylvania law only if there are additional elements of intentional misconduct and bad faith on the part of the prosecution, which I do not find to have existed here. Id. at 40-41. Accordingly, the court denied the motion to bar retrial, although it also stated on the record that the double-jeopardy issue was non-frivolous. See id. at 41, 44, 46. C. Interlocutory appeal from denial of motion to bar retrial On interlocutory appeal, the Superior Court affirmed in a non-precedential decision. The court relied on its prior decision in Commonwealth v. Adams, 177 A.3d 359 (Pa. Super. 2017), for the position that double-jeopardy principles only bar retrial where there is proof that the prosecutorial misconduct in question was committed with an intent to either provoke a mistrial or deny the defendant a fair trial. See Commonwealth v. Johnson, No. 927 EDA 2016, 2018 WL 3133226, at  (Pa. Super. June 27, 2018) (citing Adams, 177 A.3d at 371). Characterizing the prosecution’s actions as “egregious” and “intolerable,” and crediting Appellant’s description that the Commonwealth had acted with “deliberate indifference” to the nature of the evidence during trial, the intermediate court nonetheless concluded that such conduct “did not rise to the level of intentionality required to bar further prosecution.” Id. at -. D. Discretionary review by this Court One aspect of the present dispute, as reflected in the parties’ briefs, relates to the nature of the issue or issues as to which we granted review. In particular, the parties disagree as to whether this Court has accepted any issue pertaining to the standard of review that should be applied to the common pleas court’s factual finding [J-65-2019] - 11 that the Commonwealth’s misconduct was not specifically intended to deprive him of a fair trial. To resolve that question, it is helpful at this juncture to set forth the questions in terms of Appellant’s original phrasing and this Court rephrasing. Appellant presented two issues for our consideration in his petition for allowance of appeal: 1) Did the record support the finding of the lower court that “an almost unimaginable mistake that . . . produced a trial that was a farce,” given that the experienced prosecutor and the experienced assigned detective both made the same mistake, and the experienced crime scene officer testified to the exact same mistake, which proved completely false. 2) The Superior Court labeled the Commonwealth’s behavior intolerable and egregious, and described its handling of the prosecution as “deliberate indifference.” Was the Commonwealth’s deliberate indifference to the preparation and presentation of the instant capital case, which resulted in egregious mistakes and “misrepresentation of the physical evidence,” designed to deprive Kareem Johnson of a fair trial? Commonwealth v. Johnson, No. 339 EAL 2018, Petition for Allowance of Appeal, at 3-4 (ellipsis in original, footnote omitted), reprinted in Reply Brief for Appellant at 4 n.2. This Court issued an order which stated that the petition “is GRANTED,” and continued: The issue, rephrased for clarity, is: Should the Commonwealth’s misrepresentation of physical evidence in Petitioner’s first trial bar retrial on double jeopardy grounds, notwithstanding the trial court’s finding that the Commonwealth’s misconduct was unintentional? Commonwealth v. Johnson, ___ Pa. ___, 199 A.3d 346 (2018) (per curiam). Although the Commonwealth disputes that the first question posed in the petition for allowance of appeal is subsumed within this Court’s rephrasing, see Brief for Commonwealth at 15 n.4, the order reflects an unqualified grant as it contains no limiting language. Where this Court intends to deny review as to a subset of the [J-65-2019] - 12 questions raised in the petition for allowance of appeal, it qualifies its action by stating that the petition is granted, “limited to” certain issue(s), and that “allocatur is denied” as to the remaining issues. See, e.g., Estate of Benyo v. Breidenbach, ___ Pa. ___, 220 A.3d 1062 (2019) (per curiam); Commonwealth v. Peck, ___ Pa. ___, 218 A.3d 374 (2019) (per curiam). No such limiting language appears in the grant order quoted above, and the “notwithstanding” clause of the rephrased question can fairly be read to subsume the record-support issue. That clause is, notably, framed with reference to the common pleas court’s finding that the misconduct was unintentional, and not in terms of the fact that it was unintentional. Thus, we will address both issues.