Opinion ID: 2353264
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Teagle's Declaration

Text: Appellant's first claim of after-discovered exculpatory evidence is based on his co-defendant's recently modified account of the robbery and killing. After turning himself in to police, Teagle gave a statement in which he asserted that although he carried a gun during the robbery, the gun was not functioning and he fired no shots. He gave no other pre-trial statement and did not testify at trial. His redacted police confession was admitted at trial as evidence against Teagle. [9] Appellant filed a supplemental declaration with the PCRA court dated February 15, 2001, in which Teagle asserts that he, not Appellant, fired the fatal shot; that he lied about Appellant being the shooter to avoid the death penalty; that he has told close friends, including Appellant's mother and grandmother, that he regrets what happened; and that the shooting was an accident, an errant shot that randomly struck the victim. Appellant asserts that this declaration is conclusive evidence that he was wrongly convicted. Applying the above test for newly discovered evidence under the PCRA, Appellant asserts that Teagle did not come forward with this statement until February, 2001, reasonable diligence would not have procured this testimony for Appellant at the time of trial, the evidence is not cumulative, and it compels a different result. The Commonwealth asserts that, to the contrary, Teagle's declaration does not constitute newly-discovered evidence at all, because whichever defendant fired the fatal shot, Appellant knew this information from day one, and could not have only recently discovered that Teagle, not he, shot the victim. In fact, the Commonwealth points out that Appellant's brother, Elijah Washington, who testified for Appellant at his penalty phase hearing in 1994, testified that Teagle had told him that he was shooter. Thus, at the very latest, Appellant was aware of Teagle's assertion at the time of the penalty phase hearing. Further, the Commonwealth asserts that Teagle's declaration is simply incredible, in that after being convicted and sentenced for second-degree murder, he cannot be tried a second time and therefore has nothing to lose by attempting to exculpate Appellant. [10] Although Appellant refers to Teagle's confession-declaration as a recantation, it is not technically so, as Teagle's police statement was only admitted as evidence against him, not Appellant. Because Teagle did not testify against Appellant at trial, his declaration cannot amount to a true recantation. Nevertheless, Teagle's current assertion contradicts his pre-trial statement to police and is a confession to the crime for which Appellant was convicted and sentenced. We will therefore analyze Teagle's declaration consistently with our prior jurisprudence pertinent to recantation evidence. We have held that, as a general matter, after-discovered evidence of this nature is notoriously unreliable, particularly where the witness claims to have committed perjury, D'Amato, 856 A.2d at 825, and that post-verdict accomplice testimony must be viewed with a jaundiced eye. Commonwealth v. Treftz, 465 Pa. 614, 351 A.2d 265, cert. denied, 426 U.S. 940, 96 S.Ct. 2658, 49 L.Ed.2d 392 (1976). We have also said, however, even as to recantations that might otherwise appear dubious, the PCRA court must, in the first instance, assess the credibility and significance of the recantation in light of the evidence as a whole. D'Amato, 856 A.2d at 825. In Commonwealth v. Williams, 557 Pa. 207, 732 A.2d 1167 (1999), we were faced with the PCRA court's failure to make any independent determination as to the believability of the recanting person, where the PCRA court adopted the Commonwealth's argument on the matter wholesale. We remanded for a hearing at which the subject could be heard, noting that the PCRA court as factfinder is the appropriate entity to assess the credibility of the prospective testimony as reflected in the post-trial declaration. In D'Amato, the PCRA court did not mention the recantation in its opinion. We reiterated that the PCRA court, by failing to address the recantation in its opinion, had defaulted in its duty to assess the credibility of that statement and its significance in light of the trial record, and therefore remanded for the limited purpose of making such determination. Here, the PCRA court, unlike those in Williams and D'Amato, analyzed Teagle's confession and noted that Teagle had nothing to lose in contradicting his pre-trial statement. The PCRA court concluded that the claim was waived, that the evidence was not truly after-discovered, and was not persuasive evidence of innocence, implicitly finding that Teagle's affidavit was not credible. [11] Thus, the PCRA, as fact-finder, having assessed the credibility of Teagle's confession and its significance in light of the trial record, properly denied Appellant relief.