Court Opinion

ID: 9652669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:29:58.084324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:53.413733
License: Public Domain

CONCURRING STATEMENT BY
FITZGERALD, J.:
¶ 1 I join Judge Bowes’ opinion in full and readily agree that Appellant raises a legality of sentence claim. I write separately only to address a couple of points raised in Judge Shogan’s thorough and well-reasoned dissent.
¶ 2 Primarily, I disagree with Judge Shogan’s application of this Court’s en banc decision in Commonwealth v. Robinson, 931 A.2d 15 (Pa.Super.2007) (en banc). I concur that Robinson identifies three specific situations that are considered legality-of-sentence claims. However, while I agree that our courts have generally limited such claims to those three situations listed in Robinson, I note that the en banc panel did not state definitively that those three situations are the only times a claim may implicate the legality of a sentence. Nor did the en banc Court in Commonwealth v. Jacobs, 900 A.2d 368 (Pa.Super.2006) (en banc), provide that these are the only limitations, as the Commonwealth argues. See Commonwealth’s Brief at 4 n. 1 (citing Jacobs, 900 A.2d at 372-73). In fact, by stating, “[T]his class of cases includes ...” and, “Most other challenges to a sentence implicate the discretionary aspects of the sentence,” id. at 21 (emphases added), the Robinson Court expressly recognized that there may exist other situations in which an appellant challenges the legality, rather than the discretionary aspects, of the sentence imposed. Cases implicated by Commonwealth v. Dickson, 591 Pa. 364, 918 A.2d 95 (2007), in my opinion, presents such a situation.
¶ 3 I recognize that the overwhelming majority of cases implicating the legality of a sentence involve sentences which exceed the statutory maximum. However, I note that by including merger/double jeopardy issues per se in the relevant class of cases, our courts have recognized that there are some instances in which a sentence does not exceed the statutory maximum, but *170nonetheless cannot be considered legal because the sentencing court completely precluded itself from imposing an otherwise legal sentence based on its erroneous interpretation of its sentencing authority.5 See Jacobs, 900 A.2d at 373 (observing that a merger/double jeopardy claim is “one non-statutory example of an illegal sentence”) (quoting Commonwealth v. Berry, 877 A.2d 479, 483 (Pa.Super.2005) (en banc)). As an example, if a sentencing court improperly imposes consecutive sentences that should have merged, Robinson and its predecessors would require examination of the case under a legality-of-sentence standard, without even considering whether the consecutive sentences in the aggregate exceeded the statutory maximum.
¶ 4 In that sense, the facts of Robinson are distinguishable from the instant case. In Robinson, the appellant claimed that vindictiveness caused the sentencing court to impose a lengthier sentence than the appellant deemed proper. Id. at 19. Thus, the appellant did not claim that the sentencing court erroneously applied a statute that mandated a restriction of the applicable sentencing range; rather, the appellant claimed that the court’s vindictiveness affected its discretion in imposing a sentence within the statutory range. The instant facts are clearly different, because the sentencing court believed it was prohibited by statute from imposing a sentence of less than five years’ imprisonment. Therefore, the relevant consideration is not whether a legal determination affected the court’s discretion in imposing sentence, as was the case in Robinson, but, rather, whether the legal determination affected the court’s authority to impose a sentence. I cannot conclude that when a court believes it has no discretion to impose a particular sentence, we must nonetheless consider it an issue of the discretionary aspects of that sentence.
¶ 5 I must also note that it does not appear this claim would be cognizable under the PCRA. I can find no basis upon which a PCRA court could properly find these claims cognizable unless, of course, it considers them to be a legality-of-sentence issue. The only possibility would be for Appellant to assert that counsel was ineffective for agreeing that the mandatory minimum applied. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9543(a)(2). However, for over twenty years, this Court considered the mandatory minimum applicable for even unarmed co-conspirators. See Dickson, supra (examining, then disagreeing with, Superior Court precedent). Therefore, counsel at the time would have raised a frivolous claim. Appellant, accordingly, would have no recourse under the PCRA.
¶ 6 In conclusion, I agree with the dissent that there exists no precedent for the proposition that Dickson situations implicate the legality of a sentence. However, I also conclude that no case expressly, or even implicitly, prohibits the examination of the instant facts under a legality standard. In the instant case, the sentencing court believed it was prohibited by statute from imposing a sentence of less than five years’ imprisonment, a belief which the Dickson Court found erroneous. Accordingly, I am in full agreement with Judge Bowes that this case must be remanded for resentencing.

. Consider, also, that our courts have long held the failure to award credit for time served prior to sentencing involves the legality of sentence. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Fowler, 930 A.2d 586, 595 (Pa.Super.2007). This is so even without considering whether the time served combined with the sentence imposed would exceed the statutory maximum.