Commonwealth v. Martz

• Decision Date: 28 April 2020
• Docket Number: No. 1528 MDA 2018,1528 MDA 2018
• Citation: 232 A.3d 801
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Dereck Michael MARTZ, Appellant
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

232 A.3d 801

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania

v.Dereck Michael MARTZ, Appellant

No. 1528 MDA 2018

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Submitted December 2, 2019

Filed April 28, 2020

Reargument Dismissed May 18, 2020

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.^*

OPINION BY 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:

Appellee was born on April 2, 1985. M.S. ("the victim") was born in April of 1990. On September 23, 2013, M.S., who was then twenty-three years old, reported to Danville Police that he had been sexually abused as a child on an ongoing basis by Appellee, who was then twenty-eight years old. N.T., 7/30/14, at 3–6, 25. On January 9, 2014, Appellee was charged in criminal court with twelve counts of each of the following crimes: rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault of a child, indecent assault of a person less than thirteen years of age, and one count of terroristic threats, totaling sixty-one charges. At the preliminary hearing on January 27, 2014, the sixty sexual assault counts were held for trial, and the single count of terroristic threats was dismissed.

Appellee filed a Motion for Bill of Particulars on March 12, 2014, seeking identification of the dates, times, and locations of the sexual assaults. Request for Bill of Particulars, 3/12/14. He also filed a Motion for Bill of Particulars or Other Appropriate Relief on March 24, 2014. In that motion, Appellee sought dismissal of the Information due to the alleged insufficiency of its allegations and asserted that the Commonwealth did not adequately specify the dates and circumstances of the charges against him, thereby precluding him from formulating defenses. Motion for Bill of Particulars or Other Appropriate Relief, 3/24/14, at unnumbered 2. On April 3, 2014, Appellee filed an omnibus pretrial motion seeking, inter alia , dismissal based on prejudicial delay.

On May 9, 2014, due to Appellee's desire to proceed pro se , the trial court held a colloquy pursuant to Commonwealth v. Grazier , 552 Pa. 9, 713 A.2d 81 (1998), and Pa.R.Crim.P. 121. In an order dated May 9, 2014, and filed May 22, 2014, the trial court permitted Appellee to proceed pro se . Order, 5/22/14, at 1. The trial court also held a hearing on Appellee's other pretrial motions on May 9, 2014, as well as June 9, 2014. On June 27, 2014, the Commonwealth filed an Amended Information containing more specific and detailed allegations. Therein, the assaults were alleged to have begun in 1996 and continued until 2002. The hearing on Appellee's pretrial motions was resumed on July 9, 2014. At the July 9, 2014 hearing, Appellee verbally raised an "infancy defense" in which he sought dismissal of certain counts based on his claim that because he was a child between the ages of eleven and seventeen when the alleged abuse occurred, he lacked capacity to commit the crimes. In an order dated July 15, 2014, and filed July 18, 2014, the trial court scheduled a supplemental hearing on the pretrial motions. That hearing was held on July 30, 2014.

On August 11, 2014, the trial court entered the following order: AND NOW, to wit, on this 11th day of August, 2014, on the basis of the reasons set forth in the foregoing Opinion, it is ORDERED as follows:

1. The Defendant's Motion for Bill of Particulars or Other Appropriate Relief is DENIED;

2. The Defendant's oral Motion to Dismiss based upon the Infancy Defense is GRANTED IN PART. Counts 1–9, 13–21, 25–33, 37–45, 49–57 shall be dismissed to the extent that they encompass acts occurring prior to April 2, 1999 when the Defendant reached the age of 14. Those counts shall continue to be subject to prosecution in the present case as to time periods from and after April 2, 1999; and

3. The Defendant's Motion to Dismiss based upon Prejudicial Delay, contained in the Omnibus Motion filed on April 3, 2014, is DENIED.

Opinion and Order, 8/11/14, at 9.

In the opinion accompanying the August 11, 2014 order, the trial court held there is a rebuttable presumption that Appellee did not have the capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct through the age of fourteen. Opinion and Order, 8/11/14, at 3.5 It found that the Commonwealth had not rebutted that presumption and, accordingly, dismissed counts based on allegations of acts occurring prior to April 2, 1999, which was when Appellee reached the age of fourteen. Id .

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:

1. Did the lower court error [sic] by denying the Appellant's pretrial motion to dismiss based upon prejudicial delay and the statute of limitations and further erred [sic] because it was a violation of the ex post facto clauses of the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 10 and the Pennsylvania Constitution, Article I, Section 10 and the Pennsylvania Constitution, Article I, Section 17 ?

2. Did the lower court error [sic] when it denied the Appellant's Motion to Dismiss pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 600 ?

3. Did the trial court error [sic] in denying the Appellant's motion to dismiss based on a violation of his right to a speedy trial under both the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions?

4. Did the lower court error [sic] when it denied the Appellant's Motion to Dismiss based upon the Infancy Defense?

5. Did the lower court abuse its discretion by permitting hearsay evidence from a newspaper and to permit hearsay evidence that the Appellant allegedly gave an admission at a preliminary hearing?

6. Did the lower court abuse its discretion by limiting evidence of motive and bias in regards to the Appellant's wife?

7. Did the lower court error [sic] in its sentence by considering evidence before the Appellant's 14th birthday and applying the SORNA lifetime registration requirements?

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...