Court Opinion

ID: 9881898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-04 16:28:25.099276+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:25:23.332626
License: Public Domain

J-S31010-23

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

 COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA               :   IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
                                            :        PENNSYLVANIA
                                            :
              v.                            :
                                            :
                                            :
 ROGER HARPER,                              :
                                            :
                    Appellant               :   No. 2541 EDA 2022

          Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered September 7, 2022
  In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at
                     No(s): CP-51-CR-0000416-2016

BEFORE: OLSON, J., STABILE, J., and McLAUGHLIN, J.

MEMORANDUM BY OLSON, J.:                            FILED OCTOBER 4, 2023

      Appellant, Roger Harper, appeals from the order entered September 7,

2022, dismissing his petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act

(“PCRA”), 42 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546. We affirm.

      On a previous appeal, a panel of this Court summarized the relevant

factual and procedural history of this case as follows.

       On the night of October 31, 2015, the body of Sharnise Sanders,
       the decedent, was discovered in Nicetown Park in Philadelphia.
       Police collected four fired cartridge cases at the scene. Sanders,
       who at the time was dating [Appellant], suffered gunshot
       wounds to the side of her head, her right eye and her right
       thigh. On November 7, 2015, Appellant was interviewed by
       Philadelphia police detectives at the Homicide Unit and admitted
       on video to shooting Sanders. Ballistics testing showed that the
       four fired cartridge casings recovered by police matched
       [Appellant's] gun.

                                      ***

       On January 13, 2017, [Appellant] pled guilty, pursuant to a
       negotiated plea agreement, to one count of murder of the third
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       degree (18 Pa.C.S.[A.] § 2502(c)) and one count of possessing
       an instrument of crime (“PIC”) (18 Pa.C.S.[A. §] 907(a)). On
       that day, the [c]ourt imposed a sentence of 20 to 40 years[’]
       incarceration for the third degree murder charge, with a
       consecutive sentence of [two and one half] to 5 years[’]
       incarceration for the PIC charge, yielding the aggregate
       negotiated sentence of 22 [and one half] to 45 years[’
       incarceration. Appellant] did not file post-sentence motions [or
       a direct appeal].

       [Appellant] filed a pro se [PCRA] petition . . . on February 2,
       2018. Stephen T. O'Hanlon, Esquire was appointed to represent
       [Appellant] on May 16, 2018. On July 3, 2018, pursuant to
       Commonwealth v. Finley, 550 A.2d 213 (Pa. Super. 1988),
       Mr. O'Hanlon filed a letter stating that there was no merit to
       [Appellant's] claims for collateral relief[.] On July 12, 2018, the
       [PCRA c]ourt issued notice, pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907 (“907
       Notice”) of its intention to dismiss [Appellant's] petition without
       a hearing. [Appellant] submitted a response to the [c]ourt's
       907 Notice (“907 Response”) on July 26, 2018. In his 907
       Response, [Appellant] claimed that his trial counsel was
       ineffective for failing to conduct adequate pre-trial investigation
       and for providing deficient advice regarding [Appellant's] guilty
       plea. On August 24, 2018, the [c]ourt dismissed [Appellant's]
       PCRA petition and granted Mr. O'Hanlon's motion to withdraw
       his appearance.

Commonwealth v. Harper, 2019 WL 3822527, at *1 (Pa. Super. Aug. 15,

2019) (most internal citations omitted). Because Appellant’s notice of appeal

was untimely, this Court quashed his appeal of the PCRA court’s August 24,

2018 order on August 15, 2019. Id.

     On June 1, 2021, Appellant filed the instant PCRA petition, his second.

On November 11, 2021, counsel entered his appearance on Appellant’s behalf

and subsequently filed an amended PCRA petition on April 26, 2022.           On

September 7, 2022, the PCRA court convened an evidentiary hearing during

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which Appellant testified. See N.T. Hearing, 9/7/22, at 13-142. Thereafter,

the PCRA court dismissed Appellant’s petition. This timely appeal followed.

      Appellant raises the following issue on appeal:

       Did the PCRA court err and abuse its discretion by dismissing
       Appellant’s PCRA [petition] given the newly discovered evidence
       of former Philadelphia Police Detective James Pitts’ misconduct,
       which, if available to Appellant prior his conviction, would have
       changed the outcome of the case?

Appellant’s Brief at 8 (superfluous capitalization omitted).

      “On appeal from the denial of PCRA relief, our standard of review is

whether the findings of the PCRA court are supported by the record and free

of legal error.”   Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal, 833 A.2d 719, 723 (Pa.

2003). The issue of timeliness is dispositive in this appeal. “The timeliness

requirement for PCRA petitions ‘is mandatory and jurisdictional in nature.’”

Commonwealth v. Montgomery, 181 A.3d 359, 365 (Pa. Super. 2018) (en

banc), appeal denied, 190 A.3d 1134 (Pa. 2018) (citation omitted).         “The

question of whether a petition is timely raises a question of law, and where a

petitioner raises questions of law, our standard of review is de novo and our

scope of review is plenary.” Commonwealth v. Pew, 189 A.3d 486, 488

(Pa. Super. 2018) (citation omitted).

      A PCRA petition is timely if it is “filed within one year of the date the

judgment [of sentence] 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

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the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, or at the expiration of time for seeking

the review.” 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(3). Appellant's judgment of sentence

became final on February 13, 2017, at the expiration of the time for filing a

direct appeal to this Court. See 1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1908 (when the last day of the

30–day appeal period falls on a weekend or legal holiday such day shall be

omitted from the computation of time). As such, Appellant had until February

13, 2018, or one-year after his judgment of sentence became final, to file a

timely PCRA petition.    Appellant, however, did not file the current PCRA

petition until June 1, 2021, more than two years after his judgment of

sentence became final.      Accordingly, Appellant's PCRA petition is patently

untimely.

     An untimely PCRA petition may be considered if one of the following

three exceptions applies:

       (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.

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42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1). If an exception applies, a PCRA petition may be

considered if it is filed “within one year of the date the claim could have been

presented.” 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(2).

       Appellant argues that he satisfied the newly-discovered fact timeliness

exception.

        The newly-discovered fact exception has two components,
        which must be alleged and proved. Namely, the petitioner must
        establish that: 1) the facts upon which the claim was predicated
        were unknown and 2) could not have been ascertained by the
        exercise of due diligence. If the petitioner alleges and proves
        these two components, then the PCRA court has jurisdiction
        over the claim under this subsection.

Commonwealth v. Brown, 141 A.3d 491, 500 (Pa. Super. 2016) (citation

omitted).

       Appellant claims that the new “fact” he discovered was that Detective

Pitts illegally coerced suspects and witnesses to provide statements to police.

Appellant further argues that he filed the instant petition within one-year “of

learning that . . . [Detective] Pitts[] was the subject of internal affairs

investigations and had committed various acts of misconduct that involved

coercing false confessions.” Appellant’s Amended PCRA Petition, 4/26/22, at

*3-*4 (unpaginated).1 Hence, according to Appellant, Detective Pitts' use of

these tactics was a new “fact” that satisfied the newly-discovered fact

exception to the PCRA's timeliness requirement.

____________________________________________

1 Appellant failed to include any argument regarding his compliance with 42

Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(2) in his appellate brief.

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       This argument fails, however, because Appellant concedes that he knew

of Detective Pitts' use of these tactics prior to trial.   In fact, the basis for

Appellant’s claim is that, during his police interview on November 7, 2015,

Detective Pitts used unlawful interview tactics against him, resulting in

Appellant’s alleged involuntary confession.      See Appellant’s Brief at 18

(explaining that Appellant claimed that “Detective Pitts assaulted [him] on his

way to the bathroom and coerced his confession”). Hence, Appellant failed to

plead and prove that the fact upon which his claim was predicated was

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

Appellant’s PCRA petition.2

       Order affirmed.

Date: October 4, 2023

____________________________________________

2 We note that Appellant, the Commonwealth, and the PCRA court erroneously

applied the standard for after-discovered evidence, as opposed to the
standard for the newly-discovered fact exception to the PCRA’s timeliness
requirement. This Court explained the difference between the two standards
in Brown, supra. This error, however, is of no consequence as it “is well
settled that where the result is correct, an appellate court may affirm a lower
court’s decision on any ground without regard to the ground relied upon by
the lower court itself.” Commonwealth v. Lehman, 275 A.3d 513, 520 n.5
(Pa. Super. 2022) (citation omitted).

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