Opinion ID: 2328028
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: Given the procedural oddity that appellant's serial Brady petition was filed and decided while his Atkins petition, also a serial pleading, remained pending, this Court sua sponte directed supplemental briefing addressed to jurisdiction, i.e., whether the PCRA court's order of dismissal was final and appealable. In his supplemental brief, appellant argues that his appeal is improper. Appellant posits that there was a single serial PCRA petition below, raising two claims: the original Atkins claim, and the Brady claim, which appellant added by amendment. Citing Pa.R.Crim.P. 905(A), appellant says that a PCRA petitioner may amend a pending serial PCRA petition to add a new serial claim. Citing Pa.R.Crim.P. 907 and 910, appellant then argues that the PCRA court's dismissal of the Brady claim, without ruling on the Atkins claim, was not an appealable final order. Appellant does not seek to withdraw the appeal, but instead argues that this Court should quash it without prejudice to his ability to present the Brady claim when there is proper jurisdiction. Notably, Attorney Nolas, who argued to the PCRA court that it could not decide the Atkins claim, and thereby could not produce a final order under counsel's current theory, does not suggest how a final appealable order could ever be entered. Nor does counsel explain how the Atkins procedural ruling belowa ruling not to decide the claim, at counsel's urgingis not itself a ruling on the claim, thereby subject to appeal. The Commonwealth's supplemental brief argues that the appeal is a jurisdictional nullity for a different reason. In the Commonwealth's view, appellant's 2006 effort to amend his 2002 serial Atkins petition to add a new Brady claim was an improper attempt to subvert the PCRA time-bar, via manipulation of the Criminal Rules of Procedure authorizing PCRA amendments. The Commonwealth warns that if PCRA petitioners may amend serial PCRA petitions at will, abuse and maneuvering will ensue, particularly in capital cases. The Commonwealth argues that prohibiting such amendments is the only approach that respects the PCRA time-bar, see Commonwealth v. Moore, 569 Pa. 508, 805 A.2d 1212, 1225 (2002) (Castille, J., joined by Newman and Eakin, JJ., concurring and dissenting); it is also the approach the U.S. Supreme Court has taken respecting the federal habeas corpus time-bar, Mayle v. Felix, 545 U.S. 644, 650, 125 S.Ct. 2562, 162 L.Ed.2d 582 (2005); see also United States v. Duffus, 174 F.3d 333, 337-38 (3d Cir.1999); and the same rule applies to civil statutes of limitation. See Kincy v. Petro, 606 Pa. 524, 2 A.3d 490, 497 (2010). Since appellant had no right to unilaterally amend a pending serial petition to add an unrelated and time-barred Brady claim, the Commonwealth submits, he had no right to appeal an order disposing of the improper attempt to amend. The Commonwealth requests that we dismiss this appeal and remand for disposition of the Atkins petition.
Appellant's position that his Brady claim was an amendment of the pending Atkins petition is belied by the record. Our procedural Rules contemplate that amendments to pending PCRA petitions are to be freely allowed to achieve substantial justice. Pa.R.Crim.P. 905(A). And, it is true that Rule 905 does not explicitly distinguish between initial and serial petitions. However, appellant is mistaken in arguing that Rule 905 amendments are self-authorizing, i.e., that a petitioner may simply amend a pending petition with a supplemental pleading. Rather, the Rule explicitly states that amendment is permitted only by direction or leave of the PCRA court. In this case, there is no indication that appellant ever requested, or that the PCRA court ever granted, leave to amend the Atkins petition at all, much less to amend it to include a new and unrelated claim. The fact that counsel labeled the Brady petition a supplement and amendment, without authorization, does not mean the pleading amended and became part of the pending Atkins petition. Misdesignation does not preclude a court from deducing the proper nature of a pleading. See Commonwealth v. Abdul-Salaam, 606 Pa. 214, 996 A.2d 482 (2010) (involving deceptive labeling of PCRA pleading). Cf. Pa.R.C.P. No. 126. Appellant's amendment argument is baseless. Moreover, it is clear that the PCRA court treated appellant's Brady pleading as a separate petition; as counsel noted in his appeal papers, the PCRA court's order dismissed the petition, not an amendment. [9] The PCRA court characterized its order as a ruling on a serial PCRA petition that had raised a new claim subject to its own time-bar analysis. Significantly, this approach accepted the Brady claim precisely as Attorney Nolas initially argued it to the PCRA court and exactly as he had presented it to the Third Circuit in securing a federal stay. Counsel said he filed the new claim within sixty days of its discovery so as to comply with the PCRA time-bar. He posed it as a separate serial claim that could and must be ruled upon, while the Atkins petition remained in abeyance, so that the Third Circuit could proceed with the stayed federal cross-appeals, which in turn had, according to counsel, led to the Atkins petition being held in abeyance. Counsel explicitly told the PCRA court that the Third Circuit was waiting for Your Honor to decide on the issue pertaining to Mr. Gentile. N.T., 9/25/07, at 14. Likewise, in securing a stay of the federal appeals, counsel told the Third Circuit that the sole purpose of returning to state court was to litigate the new Brady claim, giving the Circuit the impression that the Brady claim was immediately reviewable, and that the resulting delay pending state exhaustion would be minimal. The PCRA court's opinion corroborates that it treated the Brady claim as a separate PCRA petition, and concluded that it lacked jurisdiction because the petition was time-barred (and that, in any event, the claim failed). The court noted appellant's filing of the 2002 Atkins petition in one paragraph. In the following paragraph, the court recounted that the Brady issue was forwarded in a pleading labeled a supplemental and amended PCRA motion, but thereafter repeatedly adverted to it simply as the petition or the instant PCRA petition without further reference to the Atkins petition. The opinion's comprehensive discussion of the PCRA time-bar and its exceptions addressed Brady alone and made no comment upon the Atkins petition. See PCRA Ct. Op. at 3-4, 8, 9, & 16. In short, the PCRA court treated the Brady filing as a distinct collateral attack ripe for resolutionjust as federal counsel had argued it was in both state and federal court, up until the point the court ruled against counsel, and just as counsel later treated it when he filed his Notice of Appeal and his initial brief.
The PCRA court's treatment of the Brady petition as separate and distinct was also authorized under the terms of the PCRA. The statute speaks in singular terms of the claim or the right which is the subject of a serial PCRA petition, 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)(1) & (2) (emphases added). These provisions are claim-specific, as they would have to be, given the sixty-day filing restriction, and the fact that the statute addresses exceptional claims. Particularly given the shifting and idiosyncratic contentions Attorney Nolas made to the court concerning the appropriate course for the proceedings, the PCRA court sensibly viewed its decision as treating the Brady claim as a separate serial petition, which it resolved by a definitive final order. The complication is whether the PCRA court had the authority to dismiss the Brady petition while the Atkins petition was in abeyance. Setting aside the question of the propriety of holding the Atkins petition in abeyance, see Part III, infra, nothing in the PCRA or our decisional law prevents such treatment; and there is no impediment of a jurisdictional nature. No case from this Court addresses this scenario; but, notably, the nearest case, Commonwealth v. Lark, 560 Pa. 487, 746 A.2d 585 (2000), does not so limit the PCRA court. Lark holds only that a PCRA trial court cannot entertain a new PCRA petition when a prior petition is still under review on appeal: Appellant could not have filed his second PCRA petition in the court of common pleas while his first PCRA petition was still pending before this [C]ourt. The trial court had no jurisdiction to adjudicate issues directly related to this case; only this [C]ourt did. A second appeal cannot be taken when another proceeding of the same type is already pending.... 746 A.2d at 588 (citation omitted); accord Commonwealth v. Jones, 572 Pa. 343, 815 A.2d 598, 604-05 (2002) (Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court); see also Commonwealth v. Bond, 572 Pa. 588, 819 A.2d 33, 52 (2002) ([I]n [ Lark ], this Court held that this precise type of new claim, alleged in a remand motion before this Court during the pendency of a PCRA appeal, must be filed as a second PCRA petition, which may not be filed until this Court completes its review of the pending PCRA matter. Permitting a PCRA petitioner to append new claims to the appeal already on review would wrongly subvert the time limitation and serial petition restrictions of the PCRA. Thus, under Lark, this Court cannot entertain this claim, which was not raised in the PCRA petition which is the subject of the appeal before us.) (citations omitted). Lark does not speak to the PCRA court's authority in situations like this one, where no appeal was pending, and where a prior petition was set aside, in accordance with the petitioner's demand that it not be decided. Nor does Lark speak to a circumstance where the new serial claim is forwarded in state court in conjunction with counsel's representation to the Third Circuit that it is immediately reviewable and a corollary representation by counsel in the PCRA court that pending federal habeas cross-appeals cannot proceed until the PCRA court acts on the new claim. Furthermore, the PCRA court here displayed commendable respect for the federal courts, given the circumstances as federal counsel had argued them. Attorney Nolas's position, if accepted, would create an open-ended federal/state gridlock occasioned by: (1) counsel securing a stay of the federal habeas cross-appeals in order to exhaust a new Brady claim, and (2) then arguing, in the PCRA court, that the court could not finally decide the Brady claim or the Atkins claim. In the meantime, the Atkins petition was held in abeyance. The necessity for prompt and final disposition of the ripe Brady petition was heightened after counsel essentially argued to the PCRA court that it was trapped, i.e., that neither the federal court nor the state court could proceed to decide appellant's collateral attacks. The PCRA court acted promptly after recognizing the choreographed absurdity of delay argued to it by federal counsel, and wisely sought to open the way to move appellant's appeals forward in both forums.
To hold that an appeal such as this is not final would also have untoward consequences in cases, unlike this one, where no strategy of delay is being pursued, and the PCRA petitioner instead seeks to have all of his claims decided. To conclude that the PCRA court ruled on only one of two distinct claims in a single serial petition, as appellant alleges we should, would not make the order below interlocutory. The PCRA court's order herethe appealable piece of paperdismissed the PCRA petition, not merely a claim within it. Nor did the PCRA court purport to render a partial disposition, i.e., an order resolving some claims, while ordering a hearing on others, without dismissing the entire petition. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 910 cmt. (adverting to partial dispositions under Pa. R.Crim.P. 907(3)). On its face, the PCRA court's dismissal order here was total, final and appealable, just as counsel said it was in his Notice of Appeal and Jurisdictional Statement. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 910 (An order granting, denying, dismissing, or otherwise finally disposing of a petition for post-conviction collateral relief shall constitute a final order for purposes of appeal.). If there was error in the proceedings that produced the order dismissing the petition in its entirety, that is a matter for objectionand specific notice was given to appellant before entry of the order here to allow for objectionand appeal. Thus, if the PCRA court was obliged to rule upon all of appellant's pending but unrelated serial claims, and erred because it failed to address all claims in dismissing the entire petition, appellant could have raised that objection below and renewed it upon appeal. Any defendant not pursuing a strategy of delay would do so. Indeed, this Court routinely sees such claims on capital PCRA appeals, where a defendant argues that the PCRA court erred in failing to individually address all claims. But, that issue-specific circumstance creates no jurisdictional impediment to appeal here, for the petition has been denied. Indeed, if a PCRA court dismisses an entire PCRA petition, while declining to rule upon a discrete claim, the petitioner's only recourse is an appeal. Otherwise, a PCRA court could insulate its partial ruling from review and correction merely by ignoring certain claims, while dismissing the petition as a whole. The point is simple and fundamental, obscured here only by the fact that federal counsel's strategypursued in both state and federal courthas been to avoid having any of appellant's collateral claims decided any time soon. This is a legally dubious, but common, strategy peculiar to certain capital defense counsel, who view delay as an end in itself for those condemned under a sentence of death. See Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 277-78, 125 S.Ct. 1528, 161 L.Ed.2d 440 (2005) (cautioning that, while many habeas petitioners might desire speedy resolution, not all petitioners have an incentive to obtain federal relief as quickly as possible. In particular, capital petitioners might deliberately engage in dilatory tactics to prolong their incarceration and avoid execution of the sentence of death.). But, consider a non-capital PCRA petitioner serving a term of years, with no incentive to pursue delay and decision-avoidance. If the PCRA court dismisses that petitioner's petition, without addressing all claims in the petition, is that dismissal not appealable? Under appellant's theory, the order is not appealable, which would leave such PCRA petitioners without any recourse: the trial court is finished with them, and the appellate court will not hear them. This consequence would be additional collateral damage of a decision that rewarded dubious, delay-oriented litigation strategies. If this case, in fact, involves but a single serial PCRA petition with two unrelated claims, as appellant states, it does not change the fact that the order below undeniably dismissed that petition, and such an order must be viewed as final and appealable. However viewed, the circumstance giving rise to the complication here is the practice of holding a serial PCRA petition in abeyance pending federal review of previously exhausted claims, which we will now address.