Com. v. Whitney
Citation | 817 A.2d 473,572 Pa. 468 |
Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee, v. Raymond WHITNEY, Appellant. |
Decision Date | 05 March 2003 |
Court | United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania |
Christina Allison Swarns, Philadelphia, for Raymond Whitney.
Catherine Lynn Marshall, Philadelphia, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Before: CAPPY, C.J., and CASTILLE, NIGRO, NEWMAN, SAYLOR, EAKIN and LAMB, JJ.
Raymond Whitney (Appellant) appeals from the Order of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County (PCRA Court), which dismissed his third Post Conviction Relief Act1 (PCRA) petition. For the reasons set forth herein, we affirm.
On May 4, 1982, a jury found Appellant guilty of murder in the first degree,2 two counts of burglary,3 two counts of robbery,4 two counts of possession of an instrument of crime,5 terroristic threats,6 indecent assault,7 and attempted rape.8 We have previously summarized the criminal episode at the heart of this case as follows:
Commonwealth v. Whitney, 511 Pa. 232, 512 A.2d 1152, 1154-55 (1986). On May 7, 1982, the jury sentenced Appellant to death in connection with his first-degree murder conviction.9 On July 15, 1986, this Court affirmed the Judgment of Sentence. Id.
On November 13, 1990, Appellant filed his first PCRA petition. The PCRA Court appointed new counsel for Appellant and held an evidentiary hearing. Thereafter, on January 3, 1995, the PCRA Court denied the first petition and Appellant sought review from this Court. During the pendency of this appeal, Appellant filed his second PCRA petition. On August 4, 1997, the PCRA Court dismissed the second petition without prejudice, due to the pending appeal. This Court affirmed the denial of the first petition on February 26, 1998. See Commonwealth v. Whitney, 550 Pa. 618, 708 A.2d 471 (1998).
On July 24, 1998, Appellant filed his third PCRA petition, alleging that his death sentence was the product of racial discrimination and that, therefore, it violated Pennsylvania's capital sentencing statute, the Pennsylvania Constitution, and the United States Constitution. Appellant argued that the PCRA Court should review his petition, because he satisfied the "newly discovered evidence" exception to the timeliness requirements of the PCRA. See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(ii) ( ). The Commonwealth moved to dismiss the third petition as untimely.
Even as this third PCRA petition was still pending, on May 6, 1999, Appellant filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal court and litigated that writ contemporaneously with his request for relief from Pennsylvania courts. The federal habeas corpus writ contained various challenges to Appellant's conviction and sentence, including the claim raised in the third PCRA petition that the death sentence was the product of racial discrimination. Thereafter, Appellant amended the federal habeas corpus writ by deleting this claim. On June 7, 1999, the U.S. District Court granted Appellant's writ of habeas corpus, finding that the guilt phase instructions on intoxication violated Appellant's due process rights.10 The Commonwealth appealed that decision to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. On February 5, 2002, the Third Circuit reversed the decision of the District Court and remanded for further proceedings.11
Before the Third Circuit issued its decision regarding Appellant's federal claims, the PCRA Court, citing to our decision in Commonwealth v. Lark, 560 Pa. 487, 746 A.2d 585 (2000), dismissed the third PCRA petition on February 13, 2001, finding that it lacked jurisdiction over the PCRA petition, because of the pending habeas corpus proceedings in federal court. Appellant sought review with this Court.
In Lark, a petitioner filed his second PCRA petition, while an appeal from his first PCRA petition was pending with this Court. Lark, 746 A.2d at 586-87. The PCRA Court dismissed the second petition. Id. at 587. On appeal, this Court ruled that when a post-conviction appeal is pending before a court, a subsequent post-conviction petition cannot be filed until the resolution of the pending appeal "by the highest state court in which review is sought." Id. at 587-88.
In the case sub judice, the PCRA Court relied on Lark in finding that it lacked jurisdiction to consider Appellant's PCRA petition. However, the federal habeas corpus proceedings are not an appeal from any state court proceeding, but an original civil action based in federal court. See, e.g., Riddle v. Dyche, 262 U.S. 333, 335-36, 43 S.Ct. 555, 67 L.Ed. 1009 (1923) ( ); Ex parte Tom Tong, 108 U.S. 556, 559-60, 2 S.Ct. 871, 27 L.Ed. 826 (1883). Therefore, Lark is factually distinguishable from this case and, consequently, the aforementioned rule is inapplicable where no appeal is pending, but there is only a parallel habeas corpus proceeding in federal court. Accordingly, the reasoning advanced by the PCRA Court in support of the finding that it lacked jurisdiction to consider the PCRA petition was not correct.
Nonetheless, because Appellant's third PCRA petition was untimely, we believe that the PCRA Court was correct in holding that it did not have jurisdiction to consider the merits of this petition. The 1996 amendments to the PCRA "mandate that all petitions for post-conviction relief, including second and subsequent petitions, be filed within one year of the date upon which the judgment became final, unless one of three [enumerated] exceptions apply." Lark, 746 A.2d at 587. See also 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1); Commonwealth v. Peterkin, 554 Pa. 547, 722 A.2d 638, 641-42 (1998). This Court has described these exceptions as follows:
[A PCRA petitioner] must show that his failure to raise these claims previously was the result of illegal interference by government officials, or that facts upon which his claims rest were unknown and could not have been ascertained with due diligence, or that he is asserting a newly recognized constitutional right, and that the petition raising these claims was filed within 60 days of the date the claim could have been presented.
Commonwealth v. Crawley, 559 Pa. 9, 739 A.2d 108, 110 (1999) (emphasis in original) (citing 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b) throughout). Thus, a PCRA petition filed past this one-year period is deemed untimely, unless the petitioner pleads and proves that one of these exceptions apply. See Lark, 746 A.2d at 587; Commonwealth v. Pursell, 561 Pa. 214, 749 A.2d 911, 914 (2000) ( ). Additi...
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