Opinion ID: 2559012
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Failure to raise prosecutorial misconduct claim on appeal

Text: Appellant first claims that direct appeal counsel was ineffective for abandoning or undermining appellant's claim that the prosecutor committed misconduct during his opening statement and misled the jury when he asserted that the name appellant gave when he was arrested, Imanuel Ali, was an alias used for purposes of concealment. Appellant's birth name was Emanuel Lester but, he argues, Ali is now his legal surname, which he has been using since 1975, and had legally changed in 1983, eight years before the murder of Sheila Manigault. Appellant contends that the prosecutor knew or should have known that Ali was his new surname and that the prosecutor's description of it as an alias created an unfair and prejudicial impression of appellant's evasiveness and consciousness of guilt and thereby deprived him of a fair trial under the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process. Appellant adds that the Commonwealth failed to disclose to the defense that it would be introducing evidence of appellant's use of different names on various documents and that this nondisclosure prejudiced him by preventing him from rebutting the Commonwealth's misrepresentation of the evidence and addressing the eventual jury instruction on flight/evasion. Appellant contends that if the jury had been made aware that at the time of his arrest, the name he gave was his then-legal name (Imanuel Ali) and that he possessed documents identifying him by that name, there is a strong possibility that it would have concluded that he displayed no consciousness of guilt. Appellant asserts that the foregoing claim was raised and preserved in his own pro se supplemental Rule 1925(b) statement as a distinct and independent claim of prosecutorial misconduct, but the claim was abandoned or undermined by direct appeal counsel's decision to present it as a matter of trial counsel ineffectiveness. Appellant argues that the claim as he presented it post-verdict was stronger than the derivative ineffectiveness claim raised by direct appeal counsel and stood a better chance of success on appeal. In response, the Commonwealth argues that appellant has waived any claim sounding in prosecutorial misconduct because he did not object at trial to the prosecutor's reference to Imanuel Ali as an alias, much less did he assert a constitutional violation. The Commonwealth relatedly adds that appellant's claim that direct appeal counsel was ineffective for failing to assert this claim fails because appellant does not argue trial counsel's underlying ineffectiveness for failing to object and also because the claim was not included in appellant's present Rule 1925(b) statement in the present appeal. The Commonwealth also notes that appellant's claim is unsupported with case law or relevant legal argument. Finally, the Commonwealth posits that appellant's claim in this regard was previously litigated on direct appeal. The PCRA court found that this claim was previously litigated on appellant's direct appeal, where this Court held: Trial counsel testified at the hearing on post-verdict motions that he did not know that appellant had changed his name to the name which the prosecution considered to be an alias. Counsel's failure to object to the characterization of the name as an alias was clearly reasonable given that counsel had no knowledge of appellant's name change. 722 A.2d at 1008. The failure to raise a contemporaneous objection to a prosecutor's comment at trial waives any claim of error arising from the comment. Commonwealth v. Powell, 598 Pa. 224, 956 A.2d 406, 423 (2008) (citing Pa.R.A.P. 302(a), which states that [i]ssues not raised in the lower court are waived and cannot be raised for the first time on appeal). An appellant may, however, pursue a derivative and collateral claim based upon counsel ineffectiveness for failing to raise that contemporaneous objection. See id. at 428. We agree with the Commonwealth that appellant's underlying claim of prosecutorial misconduct was waived at trial, and thus, direct appeal counsel cannot be deemed ineffective for pursuing the claim as one sounding in trial counsel ineffectiveness, rather than as a claim of trial court or prosecutorial error. At trial, the prosecutor said the following during his opening statement: You will hear of the efforts of the assigned detective, Detective Dougherty, to locate Mr. Lester, because Mr. Lester never, as I said, appeared in [the area of the murder] again. He was up on Broad Street, and when the police arrested him he had a different name, he had the name Emanuel [sic] Ali, further evidence of his efforts to conceal what he had done and how he was arrested. N.T., 11/6/91, at 32. The transcript reveals no contemporaneous objection by defense counsel, which appellant does not dispute. Indeed, counsel's failure to object was the very basis for the derivative claim of trial counsel ineffectiveness that was specifically raised and rejected on direct appeal. Appellant's argument that he preserved the claim by raising it in his pro se Rule 1925(b) statement cannot undo the trial-level waiver: a Rule 1925(b) statement is not a substitute for the contemporaneous objection required at trial. Moreover, appellant was represented by counsel on appeal, so his pro se Rule 1925(b) statement was a legal nullity. See Commonwealth v. Ellis, 534 Pa. 176, 626 A.2d 1137, 1139, 1141 (1993) ([T]here is no constitutional right to hybrid representation either at trial or on appeal.... [A defendant may not] confuse and overburden the court by his own pro se filings of briefs at the same time his counsel is filing briefs on his behalf.). Accordingly, any primary claim of prosecutorial misconduct or, more precisely, any claim of trial court error in responding to a preserved, contemporaneous objection to alleged prosecutorial misconduct based upon the above-quoted passage was waived. See Commonwealth v. Tedford, 598 Pa. 639, 960 A.2d 1, 28-29 (2008) (Where, as here, no objection was raised, there is no claim of `prosecutorial misconduct' as such available. There is, instead, a claim of ineffectiveness for failing to object, so as to permit the trial court to rule.). Furthermore, appellant specifically disavows any derivative claim of trial counsel ineffectiveness for failure to object, and for obvious reasons: that claim was previously litigated on direct appeal. Because appellant has not shown ineffectiveness on the part of direct appeal counsel for raising this issue as a cognizable claim of trial counsel ineffectiveness, rather than as an unavailable claim of trial court error, the present claim necessarily fails.