Opinion ID: 3032869
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: This matter comes on before this Court on Antonio Vazquez’s appeal from a final order of the District Court denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus following Pennsylvania state court proceedings. In July 2000 the Common Pleas Court tried Vazquez jointly with Gilbert Santiago on firstdegree murder and certain other charges. The jury convicted Vazquez on all of the charges against him, following which it sentenced him to life in prison. 1 The jury, however, found 1 We find it ironical that both defendants asked for nonjury trials but the prosecutor successfully objected to those requests, for if this case had been tried to the court without a jury there would have been no basis for federal habeas corpus relief on any of the grounds that we delineated in the certificate of appealability that we issued on this appeal. See Johnson v. Tennis, No. 07-1968, F.3d , 2008 WL 4925053 (Nov. 19, 2008). But the prosecutor had a strong basis for asking for a jury trial because in Pennsylvania since 1998 the Commonwealth has had by constitutional amendment the same 3 Santiago not guilty. Vazquez appealed but the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed his conviction and sentence in an unpublished opinion on February 22, 2002, that was the only appellate state court opinion in this case dealing with the issues that we consider on this appeal. Vazquez subsequently unsuccessfully sought relief in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and the Supreme Court of the United States. On May 14, 2003, Vazquez filed a petition in the Common Pleas Court for post-conviction relief under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act, 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 9541 et seq. (West 1998), but that court denied the petition on July 14, 2004. Vazquez appealed, but the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed, and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania denied review on December 29, 2005.2 On June 19, 2006, Vazquez filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. After that Court denied the petition Vazquez appealed to this Court and sought a certificate of appealability, which we granted right to a jury trial in a criminal case as a defendant. See Commonwealth v. Tharp, 754 A.2d 1251 (Pa. 2000). 2 In the post-conviction relief proceedings the Superior Court did not address the issues Vazquez raises on this appeal, and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania denied review on both the direct appeal and the post-conviction appeal by orders without opinions. The Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari without an opinion. 4 on October 11, 2007. As we will explain, the outcome of this case turns on the application of Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620 (1968), and subsequent Supreme Court cases building on Bruton.