Court Opinion

ID: 9364923
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-01-20 17:08:20.368701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:41.382635
License: Public Domain

J-S33041-22

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

    COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA                 :   IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
                                                 :        PENNSYLVANIA
                                                 :
                v.                               :
                                                 :
                                                 :
    ERIC CACHO                                   :
                                                 :
                       Appellant                 :   No. 1168 EDA 2022

              Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered April 13, 2022
    In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at
                       No(s): CP-51-CR-1103862-1999

BEFORE: KUNSELMAN, J., KING, J., and SULLIVAN, J.

MEMORANDUM BY SULLIVAN, J.:                               FILED JANUARY 20, 2023

        Eric Cacho (“Cacho”) appeals pro se from the order dismissing his

untimely serial petition for relief filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief

Act (“PCRA”).1 We affirm.

        In August 1999, Cacho shot his victim, Melvin Lewis, in the back and

killed him. A jury later convicted Cacho of, among other things, third-degree

murder. The trial court imposed a sentence of, inter alia, life imprisonment

for the third-degree murder charge based on Cacho’s prior conviction in an

unrelated case for third-degree murder. On July 18, 2003, this Court affirmed

Cacho’s    judgment      of   sentence     on    direct   appeal.   See   generally

Commonwealth v. Cacho, 832 A.2d 534, No. 3097 EDA 2001 (Pa. Super.

2003) (unpublished memorandum).                 Our Supreme Court denied Cacho’s

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1   See 42 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546.
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petition for allowance of appeal on February 25, 2004. See Commonwealth

v. Cacho, 844 A.2d 551, No. 392 EAL 2003 (Pa. 2004).

       Cacho filed several PCRA petitions over the years, including, most

recently, on February 12, 2019. In his pro se petition, Cacho alleged the trial

judge gave a constitutionally defective jury instruction and that trial counsel,

and “all prior counsel,” were ineffective for failure to recognize that the jury

instruction was deficient. See PCRA Petition, 2/12/19, at p. 3. On January

26, 2022, the PCRA court issued a notice of intent to dismiss Cacho’s petition

as untimely pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907. Cacho filed no response to the

court’s Rule 907 notice, and the court dismissed his petition on April 13, 2022.

Cacho timely appealed. The PCRA court did not order Cacho to file a concise

statement of errors complained of on appeal pursuant to Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b).2

       Cacho raises the following issues for our review:

       1.     Did the PCRA court err in conflating the facts revealed in
              Brooks v. Gilmore, 2017 WL 3475475 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 11,
              2017) [(unreported)] with the court’s final conclusion in that
              matter to conclude [that Cacho] attempted to rely upon a
              judicial decision to invoke the unknown facts exception to
              the PCRA?

       2.     Did the PCRA court err in misapplying the after-discovered
              facts exception to the PCRA in this case by concluding the
              court’s factual findings in Brooks v. Gilmore . . . did not
              present a new fact that was unknown to [Cacho]?

Cacho’s Brief at 8 (unnecessary capitalization omitted).

____________________________________________

2 The PCRA court nevertheless authored a Rule 1925(a) opinion explaining
its ruling.

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     Our standard of review is well-settled:

            Our review of a PCRA court’s decision is limited to examining
     whether the PCRA court’s findings of fact are supported by the
     record, and whether its conclusions of law are free from legal
     error. We view the record in the light most favorable to the
     prevailing party in the PCRA Court. We are bound by any
     credibility determinations made by the PCRA court where they are
     supported by the record. However, we review the PCRA court’s
     legal conclusions de novo.

Commonwealth v. Staton, 184 A.3d 949, 954 (Pa. 2018) (internal citation

and quotations omitted).

     As both of Cacho’s issues hinge on whether the PCRA court properly

dismissed his untimely petition, we address both issues together. Under the

PCRA, any petition “including a second or subsequent petition, shall be filed

within one year of the date the judgment becomes final[.]”       42 Pa.C.S.A.

§ 9545(b)(1). A judgment of sentence becomes final “at the conclusion of

direct review, including discretionary review in the Supreme Court of the

United States and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, or at the expiration of

time for seeking the review.”     42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(3).      The PCRA’s

timeliness requirements are jurisdictional in nature, and a court may not

address the merits of the issues raised if the PCRA petition was not timely

filed. See Commonwealth v. Albrecht, 994 A.2d 1091, 1093 (Pa. 2010).

     As noted above, our Supreme Court denied Cacho’s petition for

allowance of appeal on February 25, 2004; therefore, his judgment of

sentence became final after the ninety-day period for appeal to the United

States Supreme Court expired, i.e., on May 25, 2004. Accordingly, Cacho had

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until May 25, 2005 to file a timely PCRA petition.           See 42 Pa.C.S.A.

§ 9545(b)(3); see also Commonwealth v. Bankhead, 217 A.3d 1245, 1247

(Pa. Super. 2019); U.S. Sup. Ct. R. 13.1.        Cacho’s present petition, filed

February 12, 2019, is thus facially untimely.

       Pennsylvania courts may nevertheless consider an untimely PCRA

petition if the petitioner can plead and prove one of three exceptions set forth

in section 9545(b)(1)(i)-(iii). See Commonwealth v. Taylor, 65 A.3d 462,

468 (Pa. Super. 2013) (providing that a PCRA court must dismiss an untimely

petition if no exception is pleaded and proven).         Section 9545(b)(1)(ii)

provides an exception to the PCRA’s timeliness requirement if “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[.]”        42 Pa.C.S.A.

§ 9545(b)(1)(ii).      “[J]udicial decisions do not constitute new ‘facts’ for

purposes of the newly-discovered evidence exception set forth in Section

9545(b)(1)(ii).”     Commonwealth v. Kretchmar, 189 A.3d 459, 467 (Pa.

Super. 2018). Accord Commonwealth v. Watts, 23 A.3d 980, 987 (Pa.

2011) (stating that “subsequent decisional law does not amount to a new ‘fact’

under section 9545(b)(1)(ii) of the PCRA”).3

____________________________________________

3 Further, any PCRA petition invoking one of the timeliness exceptions in
section 9545(b)(1) “shall be filed within one year of the date the claim could
have been presented.”           42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(2).            See also
Commonwealth v. Williamson, 21 A.3d 236, 242 (Pa. Super. 2011)
(holding that “a petitioner invoking section 9545(b)(1)[] must still comply with
(Footnote Continued Next Page)

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       Cacho argues the trial judge gave a jury instruction that was

“unconstitutional as it elevated the level of doubt required for acquittal in

violation of clearly established [f]ederal [l]aw as announced by the United

States Supreme Court,” and recognized by a federal district court in Brooks

v. Gilmore. See Cacho’s Brief at 10. Cacho maintains he learned about the

unconstitutionality of the jury instruction through a newspaper article on

January 2, 2019. See id. at 11. Cacho argues that his newly discovered fact

is the unconstitutionality of the jury instruction. See id. at 12, 16. Lastly,

Cacho maintains the PCRA court erred because it “presumed [he] had prior

knowledge of the unconstitutional nature of the instruction yet failed to

challenge it.” Id. at 20.

       The PCRA court considered Cacho’s assertions and determined they lack

merit:

             [F]or this Court to have jurisdiction, the burden fell upon
       you to plead and prove that one of the enumerated exceptions to
       the timeliness provision applied to your case. In this vein, you
       arguably attempted to satisfy the newly-discovered fact
       exception, § 9545(b)(1)(ii), by claiming you discovered that [the]
       reasonable-doubt jury instruction contained a hypothetical which
       was subsequently determined to be improper. In support of your
       claim, you cited [a federal] district court’s decision in Brooks v.
       Gilmore, 2017 WL 3475475 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 11, 2017) which you
       discovered in a 2019 news article.

            Judicial decisions do not, however, qualify as previously-
       unknown facts. See Commonwealth v. Watts, 23 A.3d 980,
____________________________________________

section 9545(b)(2) by presenting the claim within [one year] of discovering
the new fact”) (internal citations and emphasis omitted).

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       986 ([Pa.] 2011) (holding[ that] a judicial opinion does not qualify
       as a previously-unknown fact capable of triggering the timeliness
       exception set forth in section 9545(b)(1)(ii) of the PCRA[).]

             As you failed to plead and prove one of the exceptions to
       the PCRA’s time-bar, this [c]ourt is without jurisdiction to consider
       the merits of your claim or offer any form of relief. Accordingly,
       this [c]ourt is constrained to dismiss your petition as untimely
       without exception.

Rule 907 Notice, 1/26/22, at 1.

       Following our review, we discern no error by the PCRA court. Cacho’s

PCRA petition was facially untimely. The PCRA therefore required Cacho to

plead an exception to the timeliness requirement. Cacho asserts that he only

learned that the trial court’s jury instruction was defective in January 2019

and that he promptly filed his PCRA petition thereafter. Yet this Court, as well

as our Supreme Court, have regularly held that judicial opinions are not facts

for purposes of establishing a newly discovered fact exception to the PCRA’s

timeliness requirement pursuant to section 9545(b)(1)(ii). See Kretchmar,

189 A.3d at 467; Watts, 23 A.3d at 987.4 As Cacho failed to establish a newly

____________________________________________

4 We observe that our Supreme Court recently agreed that a similar jury
instruction was deficient based on the reasoning in Brooks.                    See
Commonwealth v. Drummond, --- A.3d ----, No. 28 EAP 2021, 2022 WL
17171610 at *14 (Pa. 2022). This, however, does not impact our timeliness
analysis. Drummond raised this issue in a timely PCRA petition. We further
observe that, while the faulty jury instruction satisfies the arguable merit
prong of the ineffectiveness test, a petitioner would still have to prove that
counsel lacked a reasonable basis for failing to object to the instruction, and,
further, “it is well-settled that counsel cannot be held ineffective for failing to
anticipate a change in the law.” Id. (footnotes and quotations omitted).

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discovered fact exception to the PCRA’s timeliness requirement, the PCRA

court correctly concluded it lacked jurisdiction over Cacho’s untimely petition.

      Order affirmed.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary

Date: 1/20/2023

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