Com. v. Santiago
Citation | 822 A.2d 716 |
Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. Wilfredo SANTIAGO, Appellee. |
Decision Date | 10 March 2003 |
Court | Pennsylvania Superior Court |
William G. Young, Asst. Dist. Atty., Philadelphia, for Com., appellant.
David Rudovsky, Philadelphia, for appellee.
¶ 1 The Commonwealth appeals from the order entered September 14, 2001 by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County which granted Wilfredo Santiago's motion to suppress and his motion in limine. We affirm in part and reverse in part. The relevant facts and procedural history have previously been summarized by this Court as follows.
On August 1, 1985, the Commonwealth sought and obtained a protective order which prevented the defense from examining the affidavit of probable cause for the warrant to arrest Santiago for murder. The court also ordered that the affidavit be sealed until further court order. This order remained in effect until April 21, 1986, then the trial court lifted the protective order and directed the Commonwealth to make appropriate discovery information available to the defense. Thereafter, a suppression hearing was held from April 23, 1986 until June 6, 1986, following which the trial court refused to suppress statements made by Santiago to police and to prison inmates. Also not suppressed were physical evidence seized by police and certain intercepted wire communications. The trial court, however, did order that intercepted communications between Santiago's aunt and her husband be suppressed.
Upon remand to the trial court, Santiago, on March 17, 1992, filed a motion for pre-trial discovery in which inter alia, he requested "[a]ny evidence favorable to the Defendant which is material to the issue of guilt or punishment, or which bears upon or could reasonably weaken or affect the credibility of any evidence proposed to be introduced against the Defendant by the Commonwealth, or which bears in any material degree on the charges against the Defendant." In its reply, the Commonwealth responded that such information had "already [been] exhaustively provided." Thereafter, several hearings were held upon Santiago's discovery requests, during which the Commonwealth was ordered to disclose the daily police activity reports pertaining to the investigation of Officer Trench's murder. Ultimately, the Commonwealth was ordered also to disclose to the defense all statements of persons interviewed by police in connection with the murder of Officer Trench. On July 13, 1992, after receiving statements from the Commonwealth which had not been disclosed prior to his initial trial, Santiago filed a motion to dismiss all charges on grounds that his constitutional right to due process and principles of double jeopardy had been violated by the Commonwealth's intentional and deliberate withholding of material, exculpatory evidence. Specifically, Santiago alleged that the Commonwealth had withheld nineteen items of evidence which would have been admissible to: (1) demonstrate that there were other possible perpetrators of the crime; (2) impeach the testimony of key prosecution witnesses; and (3) undermine essential aspects of the Commonwealth's theory of the case.
A hearing was held on Santiago's motion to dismiss on September 29, 1992; and, on October 15, 1992, in a ruling issued from the bench, the trial court granted Santiago's motion and ordered that he be discharged.... The Commonwealth appealed.
Commonwealth v. Santiago, 439 Pa. Super. 447, 654 A.2d 1062, 1065-1068 (1994).
¶ 2 This Court reversed the dismissal of Santiago's charges and remanded the case after concluding that (1) the evidence withheld by the prosecution was either not exculpatory or nonmaterial to the defense and thus the lack of disclosure did not violate Brady v. Maryland,1 and (2) the prosecutor's failure to disclose certain evidence to the defense, even if the result of an intentional decision rather than a mere oversight, did not bar retrial of the defendant under the double jeopardy clause absent evidence of bad faith or specific intent to deny the defendant of a fair trial. Santiago, supra, 654 A.2d at 1063. Both a petition for allocatur and a petition for writ of certiorari were subsequently denied. Commonwealth v. Santiago, 541 Pa. 651, 664 A.2d 540 (1995) (table) and Santiago v. Pennsylvania, 516 U.S. 995, 116 S.Ct. 532, 133 L.Ed.2d 437 (1995). Santiago also filed a writ of habeas corpus with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania wherein he claimed his re-trial would violate...
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