Court Opinion

ID: 9410259
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-20 16:09:54.21871+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:56.328314
License: Public Domain

J-S20014-23

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT OP 65.37

    COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA               :   IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
                                               :        PENNSYLVANIA
                                               :
                v.                             :
                                               :
                                               :
    JUSTIN LEE JOHNSON                         :
                                               :
                       Appellant               :   No. 2115 EDA 2022

          Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Entered April 19, 2022
       In the Court of Common Pleas of Lehigh County Criminal Division at
                        No(s): CP-39-CR-0002239-2021

BEFORE:      DUBOW, J., KUNSELMAN, J., and COLINS, J.*

MEMORANDUM BY DUBOW, J.:                                     FILED JULY 20, 2023

        Appellant, Justin Lee Johnson, appeals pro se from the April 19, 2022

Judgment of Sentence entered in the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas

following his conviction of Receiving Stolen Property—Vehicle.1 After careful

review, we affirm.

        The relevant facts and procedural history are as follows. On July 18,

2021, around 3:00 PM, Timothy Sprouse, a locksmith, reported that his 2008

Mercury Mariner had been stolen. Mr. Sprouse reported that he had, inter

alia, numerous keys for different vehicles, two key machines, an electronic

key programmer, and a cell phone in his vehicle. Just moments later, Lehigh

County     Communications       dispatched     Salisbury   Police   Corporal   Charles
____________________________________________

*   Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.

1   18 Pa.C.S § 3925(a).
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Whitehead to the site of the vehicle.2 Approximately 12 minutes after Mr.

Sprouse called the police, Corporal Whitehead, accompanied by Officer Noah

Lopresti, located Mr. Sprouse’s stolen vehicle parked in the lot of a senior

living center.

         Upon their arrival, the officers observed Appellant standing in the

doorway of the driver’s side of the vehicle.     The officers immediately took

Appellant into custody and proceeded to search him, finding the keys to the

stolen vehicle in Appellant’s hand and blank checks belonging to Mr. Sprouse

in his back pocket.       The officers also discovered a bag of uncut keys in

Appellant’s front pocket. The officers subsequently transferred Appellant to

the custody of Allentown police after which Corporal Whitehead and Officer

Lopresti found another bag of uncut keys under the vehicle on the driver’s

side.3

         The Commonwealth charged Appellant with one count each of Theft by

Unlawful Taking—Moveable Property, Unauthorized Use of Motor Vehicle, and

Receiving Stolen Property—Vehicle arising from this incident.
____________________________________________

2Mr. Sprouse indicated that he was aware of the vehicle’s location because
he had used the Find My Phone application on his cell phone to track it.

3 Allentown Police Officer Robert Carbaugh arrived on the scene after Corporal
Whitehead and Officer Lopresti had placed Appellant in custody. A body
camera worn by Officer Carbaugh recorded some portion of the search of
Appellant and discovery of evidence, including the discovery of the bag of keys
underneath Mr. Sprouse’s vehicle. The court admitted the body camera
recording as evidence at trial. Corporal Whitehead confirmed at trial that the
recording fairly and accurately depicted the items of evidence removed from
Appellant’s pocket. See N.T. Trial, 3/3/22, at 51. The video recording is not
part of the Certified Record and, thus, this Court has not reviewed it.

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        Following a one-day trial at which Appellant represented himself,4 on

March 3, 2022, the jury convicted Appellant of Receiving Stolen Property—

Vehicle.5 On April 19, 2022, the trial court imposed a standard range sentence

of 18 to 36 months of incarceration.

        On April 27, 2022, Appellant filed a Post-Sentence Motion.       In the

motion, Appellant challenged the sufficiency of the evidence in support of his

conviction.    Subsequently, on May 3, 2022, Appellant filed a Motion for

Reconsideration of Sentence in which he claimed, relying on Section 9543 of

the Post Conviction Relief Act, that the court should reconsider his sentence

because, in securing his conviction, the prosecutor relied on testimony he

knew was false.

        Following a hearing on both motions, the trial court denied Appellant

relief. This timely pro se appeal followed.

        Appellant raises the following issues on appeal:

        1. Were the keys to the stolen vehicle discovered in body camera
           footage? No keys were found except for the bag of uncut keys
           in Robert E Carbaugh body cam.

        2. Were all elements to receiving stolen property proven?
           Appellant was found in possession of ignition keys and items
           last known to victim to be in vehicle.

____________________________________________

4 The trial court had, after a hearing, previously granted Appellant’s motion to
remove counsel and permitted Appellant to proceed pro se. That same day,
Appellant signed a waiver of counsel form acknowledging that he knowingly
and intelligently waived his right to counsel.

5   The jury acquitted Appellant of the other charged offenses.

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      3. Did ADA Mussel know of or should have known of witnesses
         false testimony? No false testimony was provided.

Appellant’s Brief at 1 (verbatim).

      Before we address the merits of Appellant’s issues, we consider whether

he has developed them for our review.

      It is axiomatic that the argument portion of an appellate brief must be

developed with citation to the record and relevant authority. Pa.R.A.P

2119(a)-(c). “We shall not develop an argument for an appellant, nor shall

we scour the record to find evidence to support an argument . . . .” Milby v.

Pote, 189 A.3d 1065, 1079 (Pa. Super. 2018). This Court will address only

those issues properly presented and developed in an appellant’s brief as

required by our rules of appellate procedure. Pa.R.A.P. 2101-2119. As this

Court has made clear, we “will not act as counsel and will not develop

arguments on behalf of an appellant.” Commonwealth v. Hardy, 918 A.2d

766, 771 (Pa. Super. 2007). “Appellate arguments which fail to adhere to

these rules may be considered waived, and arguments which are not

appropriately developed are waived.” Coulter v. Ramsden, 94 A.3d 1080,

1088 (Pa. Super. 2014). See also Commonwealth v. Kane, 10 A.3d 327,

331 (Pa. Super. 2010) (citations omitted) (when “defects in a brief impede

our ability to conduct meaningful appellate review, we may dismiss the appeal

entirely or find certain issues to be waived.”); Pa.R.A.P. 2101 (providing that

where the defects in an appellant’s brief are substantial, this Court may quash

or dismiss the appeal).

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       Following our review of the argument Appellant has presented in support

of his claims, we find that Appellant’s brief is substantially non-compliant with

our briefing rules. First, notwithstanding that Appellant included three issues

in his statement of questions, he has presented only one section of argument

in contravention of Pa.R.A.P. 2119(a) (requiring that the “argument shall be

divided into as many parts as there are questions to be argued). In further

violation of Rule 2119(a), although Appellant cited to record in his

“Argument,” close inspection of the citations provided reveal that they are

either incomplete, inaccurate, irrelevant, refer to evidence not included in the

certified record, or some combination of these defects.6 Similarly, of the four

case citations provided by Appellant, only one is both complete and binding

on this Court. However, Appellant cited to that one case—Commonwealth

v. Santana, 333 A.2d 876 (Pa. Super. 1975)—merely for the general

proposition that “[i]t is settled law in Pennsylvania that testimony in conflict

with the incontrovertible physical facts and contrary to human experience and

the laws of nature must be rejected[.]”          Appellant’s Brief, Argument, at 2

(unpaginated).

       Even if we could look past the substantial defects in the form of

Appellant’s Brief, we would conclude that Appellant’s substantive argument is

underdeveloped.       Although in his first two issues Appellant challenges the
____________________________________________

6 Two of Appellant’s five citations were incomplete insofar as they directed this
Court to lines of testimony without reference to the pages in the notes of
testimony in which those lines appear. One of the citations was to the body
camera video recording admitted into evidence at trial.

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sufficiency of the evidence underlying his conviction, he appears to argue

instead that the jury’s verdict was against the weight of the evidence.7 In

support, he includes a series of self-serving sentences reiterating certain

unsubstantiated “facts.” With respect to his prosecutorial misconduct claim,

Appellant’s argument consists of bald—and more importantly—unproven

assertions that Corporal Whitehead and Officer Lopresti testified falsely and

that the prosecutor knew their testimony was false.

       We cannot and will not act as Appellant’s counsel and develop

arguments on his behalf. Appellant’s failure to develop his arguments have

hampered this Court’s ability to conduct meaningful appellate review. Thus,

we conclude that Appellant has waived his claims by failing to develop them.

       Judgment of Sentence affirmed.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary

Date: 7/20/2023

____________________________________________

7 In addition to Appellant failing to develop this argument in his brief, he did
not preserve a challenge to the weight of the evidence by raising it before the
trial court as required by Pa.R.Crim.P. 607.

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