Com. v. Meals
| Decision Date | 27 December 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 58 MAP 2005.,58 MAP 2005. |
| Citation | 912 A.2d 213 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. Daniel MEALS, Appellee. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Bruce Piersoll Blocher, Esq., James Brian Rader, Esq., York, for Daniel Meals.
BEFORE: CAPPY, C.J., and CASTILLE, NEWMAN, SAYLOR, EAKIN and BAER, JJ.
The issue on appeal is the proper role of an appellate court in reviewing a sentencing court's classification of a criminal offender as a sexually violent predator ("SVP") under Megan's Law II.1 We find that the Superior Court erred in reweighing the SVP evidence presented to the trial court, rather than simply assessing the legal sufficiency of the proof respecting SVP status accepted by the trial court, and further erred in requiring greater proof than is required by the statute. Accordingly, we reverse the order below and reinstate the trial court's SVP determination.
Appellee was charged in separate criminal complaints in York County arising from his sexual assault upon two children, both daughters of his then live-in girl-friend. With respect to the older child, who was thirteen at the time of appellee's assaults in September and October of 1999, appellee was charged with indecent assault,2 attempt to commit aggravated indecent assault,3 and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.4 Appellee's assaults of the child included placing his hand upon her genitals while she was sleeping and, on another occasion, pulling her shorts and underwear down to expose her genitals and then performing oral sex upon her, which awoke the child. The younger child was nine years-old in August of 2000, the time of the assaults which formed the basis for the second set of charges. Appellee was charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse,5 aggravated indecent assault,6 indecent assault7 and corruption of minors.8 Appellee's ongoing assault on the younger child included fondling her genitals, attempted digital penetration of her vagina and ejaculating upon her. Appellee was 32-33 years-old at the relevant times. On October 29, 2001, appellee entered a negotiated plea of guilty to all of the charges in exchange for an agreement that he be sentenced to an aggregate term of imprisonment of six to fourteen years. The trial court, the Honorable Michael J. Brillhart, accepted the pleas and then postponed sentencing to permit appellee to undergo evaluation by the Sexual Offender Assessment Board ("Board") pursuant to Megan's Law II.
In January of 2002, Gregory Loop, a member of the Board, prepared a written assessment of appellee, which concluded that appellee met the criteria in Megan's Law II to warrant classification as an SVP. Loop noted that appellee had displayed an ongoing sexual interest in both of his minor victims while, at the same time, displaying no sexual interest in their mother; and that he threatened the younger child that he would harm her mother if she reported the assaults. Loop concluded that appellee had a mental abnormality or personality disorder, i.e., pedophilia, as evidenced by his sustained sexual attraction to the child victims and his acting upon that attraction. With respect to the statutory question of predatory behavior, Loop noted that appellee appeared to maintain his relationship with the children in order to assault them sexually, which supported a finding of predatory behavior.
The Commonwealth then petitioned the trial court to declare appellee an SVP. At a hearing on February 28, 2002, Loop testified and his written report was admitted into evidence. Loop testified that he had a Master's degree in counseling and specialized training in the treatment and assessment of sexual offenders. In the prior eight years, he had provided outpatient treatment to sexual offenders, as well as providing treatment and supervision of an in-home program. Loop became a member of the Board in September of 2000 and had performed eighteen SVP assessments prior to his assessment of appellee; in approximately one quarter of those cases, he had found the offender to be an SVP. Loop testified that he performed his evaluation of appellee in accordance with Section 9795.4 of Megan's Law II. That Section directs that the Board, in order to facilitate SVP assessments, establish standards for evaluations and for the evaluators who conduct the assessments. The Section further provides that:
An assessment shall include, but not be limited to, an examination of the following:
(1) Facts of the current offense, including:
(i) Whether the offense involved multiple victims.
(ii) Whether the individual exceeded the means necessary to achieve the offense.
(iii) The nature of the sexual contact with the victim.
(iv) Relationship of the individual to the victim.
(v) Age of the victim.
(vi) Whether the offense included a display of unusual cruelty by the individual during the commission of the crime.
(vii) The mental capacity of the victim.
(2) Prior offense history, including:
(i) The individual's prior criminal record.
(ii) Whether the individual completed any prior sentences.
(iii) Whether the individual participated in available programs for sexual offenders.
(3) Characteristics of the individual, including:
(i) Age of the individual.
(ii) Use of illegal drugs by the individual.
(iii) Any mental illness, mental disability or mental abnormality.
(iv) Behavioral characteristics that contribute to the individual's conduct.
(4) Factors that are supported in a sexual offender assessment field as criteria reasonably related to the risk of reoffense.
In his testimony and report, Loop stressed the following factors as significant to his opinion that appellee satisfied the criteria for SVP classification: (1) appellee committed offenses against two young females, aged 9 and 13; (2) the assaults included improper touching that progressed to include attempted digital penetration and eventually oral to genital contact; (3) appellee threatened harm to the victims' mother if the younger victim did not submit to the assaults or if she reported them; and (4) appellee was opportunistic, as he assaulted the older child while she was asleep, and the younger child only after her mother left for work. Loop's report and testimony also concluded that appellee met the profile for the mental abnormality of pedophilia. Loop also testified that appellee's actions were predatory in nature in that he formed and maintained a relationship with the mother of the victims in order to maintain contact with and to exploit the children sexually, and appellee had ceased having sexual relations with the mother, preferring instead to assault the children. Loop testified that his opinions that appellee had a mental abnormality or personality disorder and had engaged in predatory behavior were rendered to a reasonable degree of professional certainty. Loop's analysis and opinion were based on his review of records provided by the Assessment Board, but did not include input from appellee, who had elected not to participate in the evaluation process.
Appellee cross-examined Loop at length, but presented no evidence of his own countering the propriety of the SVP classification. During cross-examination, Loop noted that one important factor in the SVP determination is the risk of re-offense and that appellee's pedophilia was significant because "pedophilia is highly related to a risk to reoffend." While acknowledging that treatment of pedophilia could reduce the risk of re-offense, Loop explained that it still would not make the offender less of a risk than the general population and that "is why they're at greater risk to reoffend." N.T. 2/28/2002, 23. Asked to explain the statutory term "mental abnormality," Loop testified that "[i]t would be those behaviors as well as personal disorders that would be pulled together in manuals such as the DSM-49 that we rely upon for making a determination whether or not a person has a disorder or not, as it relates to their [sic] behavior." Id. at 36. At the conclusion of Loop's testimony, the trial court found that appellee satisfied the criteria for classification as an SVP. The trial court discussed the factors in Section 9795.4(b), related Loop's testimony to those factors, and concluded as follows:
We conclude on the basis of the records as presented that [appellee] should be and we do classify him as a sexually violent predator based upon the foregoing determination that [appellee] meets the criteria for pedophilia, given the multiple assaults on these two young girls, and in the context and setting in which they were carried out, that he did so in a predatory fashion based upon at least one of the girls being unconscious, asleep during part or portions of the assaults, and that he at least in part maintained a relationship and continued it, noting mother's absence from the home at the time in order to continue to sexually exploit and use the two children.
Id. at 45. The court then sentenced appellee in accordance with the plea agreement.
Appellee appealed to the Superior Court, challenging only the sufficiency of the Commonwealth's evidence to prove that he was an SVP. In a published opinion, a divided panel found merit in appellee's argument. The panel majority relied heavily upon the Superior Court's en banc decision in Commonwealth v. Krouse, 799 A.2d 835 (Pa.Super.2002), which it characterized as follows. The Commonwealth's expert in Krouse concluded that the defendant there had a personality disorder and was likely to reoffend, basing his opinion on published studies finding that persons who engaged in conduct similar to that of the defendant were likely to repeat it. The Krouse court held that the expert's finding of a personality disorder was flawed because he assumed certain facts which were not supported in the...
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