Court Opinion

ID: 9752596
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:19:08.3954+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:18.522744
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice CASTILLE,
concurring.
I join the learned Majority Opinion, which vacates the erroneous order of the PCRA1 court granting appellee relief on his serial petition, in its entirety. Appellee’s belated Batson2 claim, as well as his derivative equal protection/due process claim, plainly is time-barred and not subject to any of the limited time-bar exceptions, and the PCRA judge should have followed those statutory commands. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b). I write separately only to address a concern with the PCRA court’s approach to the Batson claim and the Atkins3 claim, and to address a point made in Mr. Justice Saylor’s Concurring Opinion.
It appears that the PCRA court accepted appellee’s alternative theory that the grant of Batson relief to his co-defendant contemporaneously gave rise to a viable due process or equal protection right to demand identical relief via a serial PCRA petition. As the Majority notes, the Honorable Willis Berry (who was not the trial judge) made a legal finding of a Batson violation with respect to co-defendant Spence, who allegedly is African-American, who actually raised a Batson objection at trial, and who apparently timely renewed that challenge after disclosure of the “McMahon tape.” Judge Berry erroneously concluded that the relief he granted on the co-defendant’s preserved claim was a “new fact” which made appellee’s own untimely and unpreserved Batson claim — raised in a serial petition — both timely and meritorious. At the end of his *369explanation of why he granted Batson relief, Judge Berry addressed appellee’s alternative “equal protection” theory in the following concluding paragraph:
There was purposeful discrimination, and a re-trial for [co-defendant] Spence is scheduled.... It would be patently unjust to deny Petitioner’s [sic] equal protection under the Pennsylvania and U.S. Constitutions on the basis that he did not share his co-defendant’s skin color, especially when the retrial will be for the actual doer, and Petitioner was the lookout.[4] In fact, to do the right thing, every co-defendant — Moms Spence, Richard Hackett, James Gray, and Keith Barrett — whether raised in a petition or not, should have their convictions overturned and given new trials.
This analysis is irrelevant and unpersuasive as a jurisprudential matter. Ours is a nation, and a Commonwealth, of laws. The judiciary exists to construe the law, not to indulge vague notions of what a judge may feel would amount to “doing the right thing” in the absence of law. The PCRA judge should be mindful of his duties to consult and apply the law, including the salutary restrictions in the PCRA.
The PCRA judge’s performance on the Atkins issue, which this Court remanded for reconsideration in 2003, is equally troubling. The PCRA court’s indeterminate handling of an Atkins claim we specifically remanded was as superficial as its analysis of the defaulted Batson and unripe equal protection claims it inexplicably embraced.
Finally, I write separately to address Justice Saylor’s observation in his Concurring Opinion that “Batson violations are a *370form of structural error ‘affecting the framework within which the trial proceeds, rather than simply an error in the trial process itself.’ ” Concurring Slip Op. at 1 (quoting Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991)). As support for its characterization of Batson violations as a type of structural error, the Concurring Opinion cites the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Fulminante, United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74, 124 S.Ct. 2333, 159 L.Ed.2d 157 (2004), and Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 144 L.Ed.2d 35 (1999), as well as this Court’s decision in Commonwealth v. Basemore, 560 Pa. 258, 744 A.2d 717, 734 & n. 18 (2000). Yet, neither Neder nor Dominguez Benitez mentioned Batson violations at all as each addressed structural error only generally, see Neder, 527 U.S. at 8-9, 119 S.Ct. 1827; Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. at 81, 124 S.Ct. 2333, and, while Fulminante did identify discrimination in grand jury selection as a type of structural error, it did so without elaboration and only as one example among a laundry list of many others, see Fulminante, 499 U.S. at 310, 111 S.Ct. 1246. Similarly, Basemore merely commented without elaboration that “Batson violations fall within a limited and unique category of claims which, by the nature of their impact upon the fundamental fairness of a trial, are not subject to conventional harmless error or prejudice analysis.” Basemore,. 744 A.2d at 734.
I merely note my own view that, if a Batson claim implicates “structural error,” it is a unique form of structural error. Structural errors typically “deprive defendants of basic protections without which a criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence and no criminal punishment may be regarded as fundamentally fair.” Neder, 527 U.S. at 8-9, 119 S.Ct. 1827 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). The classic example is denial of the right to counsel. In contrast, as Batson’s progeny has made clear, the core right being protected by Batson is the right of citizen-jurors not to be discriminated against. When such purposeful discrimination occurs, relief may be granted to a party — the defendant or the Common*371wealth in a criminal case — irrespective of whether the discrimination produced a jury that, in fact, was unable to be fair. The error is “structural” only in the sense that it is the type of claim that does not require proof of actual prejudice. Thus, I do not believe that it is the “structural” nature of the claim that weighs in favor of an expansive “standing” approach. The “standing” is expansive because it is the juror whose right is primarily at issue: the Commonwealth, or the defendant as the case may be, objects to vindicate the right of a citizen who lacks “standing” himself to object.
Finally, and respectfully, I would note that I believe the Spence5 procedural requirements are salutary in the direct review paradigm. A true assessment of strikes must account for the composition of the panel as a whole, and the conduct of other lawyers exercising strikes. It must be remembered that Batson works both ways: the right of jurors being at issue, neither the defense nor the prosecution may discriminate, and discriminating actions of one side, if unaccounted for, result in an incomplete picture.
Justice EAKIN and McCAFFERY join this opinion.

. Post Conviction Relief Act, 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-9546.

. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986).

. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002).

. Appellee's active role in this conspiracy to murder multiple victims was far more than as a mere lookout. As this Court noted on direct appeal, “Hackett's convictions arose as the result of a conspiracy which he led for the primary purpose of killing Gregory Ogrod.’’ Commonwealth v. Hackett, 534 Pa. 210, 627 A.2d 719, 721 (1993). Appellee's animus against Ogrod arose from "a living arrangement that went bad,” while co-defendant Spence's animus arose from a “soured drug-dealing relationship” with Ogrod. Id. In advance of the early morning, brutal assault that resulted in serious injuries to Ogrod and the murder of sixteen-year-old Maureen Dunne by a stab wound to the heart, appellee had, in addition to announcing his intention to kill Ogrod, offered a “hitman" $5,000 to kill Ogrod and Ms. Dunne. Id. at 721-22. Appellee was an architect of the crimes.

. Commonwealth v. Spence, 534 Pa. 233, 627 A.2d 1176 (1993).