Com. v. Sanchez

• Decision Date: 27 September 2006
• Citation: 907 A.2d 477
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Ramon SANCHEZ, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

907 A.2d 477

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Ramon SANCHEZ, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued December 6, 2005.

Decided September 27, 2006.

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Matthew D. Weintraub, Esq., James Bernard Martin, Esq., Amy Zapp, Esq., for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Charles A. Banta, Esq., Allentown, for Ramon Sanchez.

BEFORE: CAPPY, C.J., and CASTILLE, NEWMAN, SAYLOR, EAKIN and BAER, JJ.

OPINION

Justice SAYLOR.

This is a capital direct appeal, arising out of a robbery-homicide. The background is as follows.

Appellant and Sashana Young, a juvenile with whom he was intimate, moved from New York City to Allentown, Pennsylvania, between one and two weeks prior to the killing on July 18, 2001. Appellant's half-sister, AnnJulie Torrez, lived in the area sometimes staying with relatives, but apparently Appellant was not permitted to stay with those relatives. On the night before the murder, the victim, Lloyd Gehret, gave the trio money for food and permitted them to sleep in an apartment that he owned and was renovating. There was evidence that the victim was attracted to Young and Torrez, and that Appellant was told of advances that the victim had made toward them.

The next morning, when Mr. Gehret arrived at the apartment, Appellant sliced his neck with a utility knife and killed him by bludgeoning him with a hammer. Young and Torres were present in the apartment at various points during the ten or fifteen minutes throughout which Appellant perpetrated the killing, with Young handing Appellant the hammer and stabbing at the victim with a screwdriver at Appellant's direction. As Mr. Gehret lay dying, Appellant took his wallet and keys. Upon leaving the scene, Appellant said: "This is my 17th body, I'll never get caught." He discarded his bloody sweater and sweatpants in a garbage can on a nearby street.

The next day, Torrez voluntarily approached police and provided a statement implicating Appellant and Young in the killing. She disclosed the location of the bloody clothing that Appellant had discarded, which the police retrieved. Further, she indicated that Appellant and Young were staying in a specific room at a boarding house on North Front Street in Allentown, and that Appellant remained in possession of the victim's wallet, which was located there as well. Based on this information, a detective applied for a search warrant, which was issued by a district justice.

A police emergency response team executed the warrant, with two non-uniformed officers entering the building first. Appellant and Young were found in the designated room, along with the victim's wallet and other incriminating evidence.

Upon Appellant's arrest, he unsuccessfully pursued several pre-trial motions, including an attempt to obtain an order suppressing all evidence deriving from police entry into the room in which he was arrested, based on alleged deficiencies in the supporting affidavit of probable cause submitted by an investigating officer. Further, Appellant asserted that the police failed to knock and announce their presence prior to entering to execute the warrant, in violation of applicable procedural and constitutional requirements. Appellant also sought to avoid trial based on a claimed lack of competency. Initially, a court-appointed mental-health professional diagnosed Appellant as suffering from, among other disorders, paranoid schizophrenia, and he reported that Appellant was incompetent to stand trial. See N.T., February 19, 2003, at 212-13. Appellant was thereafter involuntarily committed for further assessment and any necessary treatment. Upon his discharge, the Commonwealth produced testimony at a pretrial competency hearing that Appellant, while perhaps suffering from some mental disorders, was nevertheless competent and was malingering, and the trial court credited this evidence.

At trial, Young and Torrez testified as Commonwealth witnesses, and Appellant's counsel objected and moved for a mistrial when the Commonwealth adduced testimony from them concerning Appellant's indication that the victim's was his "seventeenth body." Appellant's counsel asserted a general objection and, at sidebar, explained that the statement was "a bombshell" that was "totally unanticipated" by counsel. N.T., March 6, 2003, at 184-85. The district attorney responded that he was certain that he had disclosed the statement prior to trial. The trial court ruled that the testimony was relevant and admissible, but only to demonstrate that Appellant's state of mind reflected a specific intent to kill, and to show that the witnesses had reason to fear Appellant, which aided in explaining their delay in reporting the crimes. The court also gave cautionary instructions concerning the limited purposes for which the evidence could be considered.

Appellant was convicted, inter alia, of first-degree murder and robbery. At the penalty phase of trial, the Commonwealth proceeded on the basis of the aggravating circumstance pertaining to commission of a killing while in the perpetration of a felony, see 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(d)(6), here, robbery. The defense presented evidence in mitigation that Appellant was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance, see 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(e)(2); suffered from an impaired capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform it to the requirements of the law, see 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(e)(3); was of a relatively young age at the time of his crimes, see 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(e)(4); and was subject to life circumstances such as poverty, abuse, and homelessness during his childhood that might serve as mitigating factors under the catch-all mitigator, 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(e)(8). The jury ultimately returned a death verdict following extended jury deliberations, which were interrupted by several reports of impasses. The jurors unanimously found the in-perpetration-of-a-felony aggravator, and one or more jurors credited three of the mitigating circumstances that Appellant had pursued.¹

In post-sentence motions, Appellant contended, inter alia, that the death penalty is unconstitutional as applied in Lehigh County, because prosecutorial discretion is exercised in an arbitrary and/or racially biased fashion in the selection of cases in which the death penalty will be pursued; the juror selection process in Lehigh County systematically excludes members of the Hispanic population, and therefore, violated Appellant's constitutional right to be tried by an impartial jury of his peers; the trial court erred in denying suppression of evidence deriving from police entry into the room where Appellant and Young were arrested, because the search warrant was constitutionally flawed and police failed to knock and announce their presence prior to entry; the trial court erred in finding Appellant competent to stand trial; and the court erred in refusing to grant a mistrial following the introduction of Appellant's statement that "[t]his is my 17th body." The trial court denied post-sentence relief on all claims.

Concerning the allegation of an arbitrary exercise of prosecutorial discretion, the trial court observed that the burden of proof rested with the defense, see Commonwealth v. Hardcastle, 519 Pa. 236, 258, 546 A.2d 1101, 1111 (1988), but that Appellant had produced no evidence concerning this claim at a pre-trial hearing that was afforded for that purpose, see N.T., January 31, 2002, at 25-26. See Commonwealth v. Sanchez, No. 3652 of 2001, slip op. at 24-25 (C.P. Lehigh Nov. 5, 2004).² Further, the court found that the district attorney had no obligation to produce historical information to the defense upon request, because there was no showing that such information was not equally available to Appellant, either via the office of the Clerk of Courts or through routine investigative work. See id. at 19-24. In response to a defense contention that the Commonwealth had agreed to supply the relevant information, the trial court found as a fact that there was no such agreement. See id. at 20-21.

The court found a similar failure of proof with respect to the claim that the array of potential jurors for Appellant's trial did not represent a fair cross-section of the community, in that it unreasonably excluded persons of Hispanic origin. Initially, the court noted that Lehigh County's system of utilizing an annual master list of licensed drivers in the county who are eighteen years or older was deemed by this Court to be consistent with constitutional requirements in Commonwealth v. Lopez, 559 Pa. 131, 149-50, 739 A.2d 485, 494-95 (1999). The trial court then considered the specific requirements that a challenger demonstrate that an identifiable group is not fairly and reasonably represented in the jury pool, and that this is the result of systematic exclusion of the group from the selection process. See id. (citing Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 364, 99 S.Ct. 664, 668, 58 L.Ed.2d 579 (1979)). Referencing Appellant's evidence consisting of census data suggesting that the Hispanic population in Lehigh County in the year 2000 represented approximately ten percent of the general county population, the trial court determined that Appellant had established neither element. In this regard, it noted that the census information was not current; there was nothing in the data particularizing the criteria used to identify members of the Hispanic population; nothing was offered to align the ten percent figure with the eligibility criteria for jury service; no evidence was adduced concerning the extent to which Hispanics were actually represented in the jury pool pertaining to Appellant's case; and the only testimonial evidence on the subject reflected an entirely race-neutral system of jury selection. See Sanchez, No. 3652 of 2001, slip op. at 28-29 ("There was not a scintilla of evidence that there was willful or even innocent exclusion of Hispanics from the...