Court Opinion

ID: 9905974
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-30 17:10:16.284375+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:24:02.368157
License: Public Domain

J-S36012-23

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

 COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA             :   IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
                                          :        PENNSYLVANIA
                                          :
              v.                          :
                                          :
                                          :
 BENJAMIN COOPER                          :
                                          :
                    Appellant             :   No. 3029 EDA 2022

          Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered November 2, 2022
  In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at
                     No(s): CP-51-CR-1100941-2003

BEFORE: BOWES, J., NICHOLS, J., and KING, J.

MEMORANDUM BY BOWES, J.:                       FILED NOVEMBER 30, 2023

      Benjamin Cooper appeals from the order denying as untimely his sixth

petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”). We affirm.

      By way of background, on April 12, 2005, Appellant was convicted by a

jury of, inter alia, third-degree murder. He was sentenced to an aggregate

term of thirty-one to sixty-two years of incarceration. This Court affirmed the

judgment of sentence on direct appeal, which became final in 2007 after our

High Court denied his petition for allowance of appeal and Appellant did not

seek discretionary review before the United States Supreme Court.         See

Commonwealth v. Cooper, 911 A.2d 178 (Pa.Super. 2006) (unpublished

memorandum), appeal denied, 927 A.2d 622 (Pa. 2007).              Since then,

Appellant has filed five petitions under the PCRA, all of which were denied or

dismissed.
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      On May 24, 2021, Appellant filed the instant pro se petition, his sixth,

“consisting of 225 pages including exhibits [and] listing approximately

[seventy-one] instances of alleged error.” PCRA Court Opinion, 1/13/23, at

3. Appellant subsequently filed an amended petition that was also over 200

pages in length and unpaginated. Therein, Appellant raised “numerous claims

of trial court error, bias, and misconduct on the part of virtually everyone

involved with the prosecution of this case from pretrial through the several

PCRA[ proceedings].”      Id. at 10.   More particularly, the petition alleged

violations of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), by the Commonwealth,

ineffective assistance of trial counsel, and issues relating to the jury

instructions given at trial.

      The Commonwealth filed a motion to dismiss the amended petition,

asserting its facial untimeliness and Appellant’s failure to plead and prove any

exception to the PCRA’s time-bar. The PCRA court issued a notice of intent to

dismiss the petition as untimely pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907.         Appellant

failed to respond, and the court dismissed the petition.

      Appellant filed a timely pro se notice of appeal. The PCRA court provided

an opinion pursuant to Pa.R.A.P. 1925(a) without requiring Appellant to file a

Rule 1925(b) statement.

      In his brief, which spans over 600 pages with the included twenty-two

exhibits, Appellant identifies nineteen issues for this Court’s consideration. In

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violation of Rule 2119(a),1 he divides the argument section of his brief into

only eight parts.     Although the arguments are often difficult to follow and

frequently conflate with one another, it appears that some address the

timeliness of his petition, whereas the remainder discuss the substance of his

claims in the amended PCRA petition.2

       We address the propriety of the PCRA court’s dismissal order as follows:

“The standard of review of an order dismissing a PCRA petition is whether that

determination is supported by the evidence of record and is free of legal error.

The PCRA court’s findings will not be disturbed unless there is no support for

the findings in the certified record.” Commonwealth v. Cruz, 223 A.3d 274,

277 (Pa.Super. 2019) (cleaned up).

       Before turning to the merits of Appellant’s claims, we must first

determine whether his petition was timely, since neither this Court nor the

PCRA court has jurisdiction to consider an untimely PCRA petition.         See

____________________________________________

1 This rule provides in relevant part that “[t]he argument shall be divided into

as many parts as there are questions to be argued; and shall have at the head
of each part—in distinctive type or in type distinctively displayed—the
particular point treated therein, followed by such discussion and citation of
authorities as are deemed pertinent.” Pa.R.A.P. 2119. Additionally, Appellant
violated Rule 2135 when he failed to include a certificate of compliance as to
the number of words comprising his principal brief, despite it being over thirty
pages in length. See Pa.R.A.P. 2135. Since Appellant’s failure to comply with
these rules does not impede our review, however, we decline to find waiver
based on these infractions.

2 We note with significant disappointment that the Commonwealth failed to

timely file a brief in this matter, despite requesting, and receiving, four
extensions of time in which do so.

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Commonwealth v. Ballance, 203 A.3d 1027, 1030-31 (Pa.Super. 2019). In

this respect, the PCRA provides as follows:

        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.

42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b). Any petitioner invoking one of these exceptions must

file a petition “within one year of the date the claim could have been

presented.” 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(2). Additionally, this Court has stated that

the petitioner “bears the burden of pleading and proving an applicable

statutory exception.”       Commonwealth v. Pew, 189 A.3d 486, 488

(Pa.Super. 2018).

        As discussed above, Appellant’s judgment of sentence became final in

2007.     There is no dispute that the instant petition was facially untimely.

Therefore, Appellant had the burden to plead and prove one of the enumerated

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exceptions to the PCRA’s time-bar in his amended petition before the PCRA

court could consider the merits of any of his claims.

      From our review of the amended petition, we find that Appellant

unartfully invoked several exceptions to the timeliness requirement, though

he did not articulate them as such.      From what we can gather, he first

contended that two cases, Commonwealth v. Small, 238 A.3d 1267 (Pa.

2020), and Commonwealth v. Burton, 158 A.3d 618 (Pa. 2017), bear on

the “newly discovered facts” exception.       See Amended PCRA Petition,

9/10/21, at unnumbered 2-5.       Appellant discussed these cases for their

holding that courts may not apply to pro se prisoners the presumption that

information which is of public record cannot be deemed “unknown” for

purposes of § 9545(b)(1)(ii). Id. Although he did not raise either case in the

context of a new constitutional right, he impliedly suggested that these cases

apply retroactively to him and should allow him to now raise the same claims

he did in his prior petitions that were deemed untimely. Id. at unnumbered

4. In conjunction with this claim, Appellant referenced various news articles

and unrelated court cases purporting to show corruption and police

misconduct by particular officers and detectives involved in his case. Id. at

unnumbered 8-12.

      Additionally, in his petition Appellant arguably invoked the notion that

his claims satisfied the governmental interference exception based on alleged

Brady violations by the Commonwealth, both before and after trial. Id. at

unnumbered 18-20.       Therein, he purported that case files, discovery,

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evidence, and transcripts were destroyed by police. Id. at unnumbered 18.

Appellant   also   asserted    governmental     interference   because    the

Commonwealth failed to send him the articles and news reports concerning

investigations into police misconduct. Id. at 19.

     We note that in order to successfully invoke the “newly discovered facts”

exception under § 9545(b)(1)(ii), a petitioner must “establish that the facts

upon which the claim is based were unknown to him and could not have

been ascertained by the exercise of due diligence.” Commonwealth v.

Burton, 158 A.3d 618, 629 (Pa. 2017) (emphasis added).         Regarding the

governmental interference exception, our High Court has stated in the same

vein that “[a]lthough a Brady violation may fall within the governmental

interference exception, the petitioner must plead and prove the failure to

previously raise the claim was the result of interference by government

officials, and the information could not have been obtained earlier with

the exercise of due diligence.” Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal, 941 A.2d

1263, 1268 (Pa. 2008) (emphasis added).

     In its Rule 1925(a) opinion, the PCRA court thoroughly summarized the

law applicable to each of the three exceptions to the PCRA’s timeliness

requirements, and ultimately concluded that Appellant failed to carry his

burden as to any exception. See PCRA Court Opinion, 1/13/23, at 6-11. With

regard to Appellant’s assertion of governmental interference, the court noted

that the items alleged to have been destroyed were case files and transcripts

from hearings in 2004, and Appellant took no steps to plead and prove that

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his failure to raise this claim until now was the result of interference from any

particular government official. Id. at 6-7. Concerning Appellant’s asserted

newly discovered facts of purported police corruption, the PCRA court likewise

determined that Appellant took no steps in the amended petition to

demonstrate that he exercised due diligence in ascertaining this information,

such as identifying when he learned of it or his attempts to get the

information. Id. at 8. Finally, in addressing Appellant’s reliance on Small

and Burton as to the public record presumption and pro se prisoners, the

court determined that neither case created a new constitutional right for

defendants, but rather only interpreted the provisions of the PCRA. Id. at 9.

       Upon review of the certified record and the applicable law, we find that

the court’s decision to dismiss the amended PCRA petition as untimely is

supported by the record and free from legal error. In his petition, Appellant

failed to show the exercise of any diligence, let alone due diligence, as to why

he could not raise his alleged newly discovered facts or governmental

interference claims earlier. He did not indicate when he learned of any of the

facts supporting his petition;3 how he learned of them; how any particular

government official interfered with his ability to discover them, other than a

bald assertion that the Commonwealth did not “provide” him with news

____________________________________________

3 Indeed, Appellant admits this in his brief to this Court. See Appellant’s brief
at 24, (stating that “Appellant does not directly address the timeliness of when
he received certain pieces of evidence listed in his petition”).

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reports years after trial; or otherwise that his filing was made within one year

of learning any new facts.

      Further, to the extent Appellant relies on the holdings in either Small

or Burton as a new “fact,” our High Court has determined that “judicial

determinations are not facts.” Commonwealth v. Watts, 23 A.3d 980, 986

(Pa. 2011). Likewise, we agree with the PCRA court that neither case has

been determined by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court or United States

Supreme Court to apply retroactively or grant any new constitutional rights.

Rather, they collectively found that a prior presumption applied by

Pennsylvania courts no longer applied to pro se prisoners.

      Moreover, we observe that in his fifth PCRA petition filed in 2018, which

we likewise concluded on appeal was untimely, Appellant asserted a nearly

identical governmental interference Brady claim as that raised herein. See

Commonwealth v. Cooper, 2018 WL 5918485 at *3 (Pa.Super. 2018)

(unpublished memorandum). We rejected that claim due to Appellant’s failure

to plead the exercise of his due diligence. Id. Appellant has not convinced

us by his new petition why the result should be any different here.

      In short, Appellant’s sixth PCRA petition is untimely, and we lack

jurisdiction to consider the merits of the arguments raised therein.

Accordingly, we affirm the PCRA court’s order dismissing the petition.

      Order affirmed.

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Date: 11/30/2023

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