Commonwealth v. Martz
Decision Date | 28 April 2020 |
Docket Number | No. 1528 MDA 2018,1528 MDA 2018 |
Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Dereck Michael MARTZ, Appellant |
Court | Pennsylvania Superior Court |
Michael J. Rudinski, Williamsport, for appellant.
Christopher J. Schmidt, Assistant District Attorney, Harrisburg, for Commonwealth, appellee.
BEFORE: OLSON, J., DUBOW, J., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*
Appellant, Dereck Michael Martz, appeals from the judgment of sentence entered in the Court of Common Pleas of Montour County after a jury found him guilty of five sex crimes he committed between the ages of 11 and 17 against a boy five years his junior. Receiving an aggregate sentence of 12 to 50 years’ incarceration, Appellant raises numerous issues for our review. We affirm.
In this Court's previous disposition of the Commonwealth's interlocutory appeal in this matter, we set forth pertinent facts and pre-trial procedural history of the case, as follows:
Commonwealth v. Martz , 118 A.3d 1175, 1176-78 (Pa.Super. 2015).
The Commonwealth filed an interlocutory appeal to this Court, which held, inter alia , that the infancy defense applies to criminal prosecutions for conduct committed before age 14 and is a rebuttable presumption that a defendant may raise before trial. Martz , 118 A.3d at 1183-84. We further determined, however, that the trial court had not given the Commonwealth an adequate opportunity to rebut the presumption, and so we remanded the matter for further proceedings consistent with our decision. Id . The Commonwealth filed a petition for allowance of appeal with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which initially granted the petition before eventually dismissing the appeal as having been improvidently granted.
The case returned to the trial court, which instantly entered an order directing that the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General assume jurisdiction over the prosecution of the present case. On January 9, 2017, the Office of the Attorney General entered its appearance. Subsequent pre-trial proceedings before the trial court resulted in court orders permitting the Commonwealth to present evidence rebutting Appellant's infancy defense and to file an amended information reducing the number of charges to five.1
Trial commenced on December 12, 2017, at the conclusion of which the jury found Appellant guilty on all charges. Informed by a presentence investigation report at the sentencing hearing of February 27, 2018, the trial court imposed standard guideline range sentences of incarceration as follows: 5 ½ to 20 years for Rape of a Child; 5 ½ to 20 years for IDSI, to run consecutive to Count 1; 1 to 10 years for Statutory Sexual Intercourse, to run consecutive to Count 1; 3 to 10 years for Aggravated Indecent Assault, to run concurrent to Count 1; and 1 to 2 years for Indecent Assault; to run concurrent to Count 1, for an aggregate sentence of 12 to 50 years’ incarceration. On April 13, 2018, the court ordered that Appellant register as a lifetime sex offender pursuant to the current version of Pennsylvania's Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act ("SORNA II"), 42 Pa.C.S. § 9799.10 et seq. This timely appeal followed.
Appellant presents the following questions for our consideration:
Appellant's brief, at 5.
Appellant first contends the lower court erred by denying his pre-trial motion to dismiss raising ex post facto2 and prejudicial delay challenges to the application of amended statutes of limitations that took effect after the time of his alleged crimes. Specifically, in the relevant period, two amendments extended the limitations period for sex crimes committed against minors, with the most recent amendment permitting the filing of charges at any time prior to a minor victim's 50th birthday.
Appellant was charged with the above-mentioned sex offenses in connection with his repeated sexual assaults of the minor victim from 1996 through 2002. At that time, the applicable limitations period would have expired on April 18, 2013, five years after the victim's 18th birthday. However, on August 27, 2002, well before that expiration date, our legislature amended the limitations statute to provide a 12-year limitations period following a minor victim's 18th birthday. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 5552 (b.1). As such, this first amendment enacted in 2002 extended the limitations period in the present case to April 18, 2020. As noted above, a subsequent amendment enacted in 2007 and still in effect further extended the limitations period, allowing the filing of charges up to...
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