Commonwealth v. Robinson
| Decision Date | 14 December 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 720 CAP,720 CAP |
| Citation | 198 A.3d 340 (Mem) |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Antyane ROBINSON, Appellant |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
AND NOW, this 14th day of December, 2018, the order of the court of common pleas is affirmed by operation of law, as the votes among the participating Justices are equally divided. Appellant's Motion to Disqualify the Cumberland County District Attorney's Office is denied as moot.
Chief Justice Saylor and Justices Baer and Todd did not participate in the consideration or decision of this case.
In this capital appeal, we review the dismissal, on timeliness grounds, of the third petition for relief filed by Appellant Antyane Robinson ("Robinson") pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act, 42 Pa. C.S. §§ 9541-9546 ("PCRA").1 Robinson's petition, raising a due process violation, is premised upon the receipt and delivery of offensive emails by former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin ("Eakin") and possible ex parte communication between Eakin and members of the Office of the Cumberland County District Attorney (the "DA"). We are also asked to decide whether the DA should be disqualified from participating in this matter based on the connection between the DA and Eakin that was exposed through Eakin's disciplinary proceedings. For the reasons that follow, we would conclude that Robinson satisfied the newly discovered fact exception to the PCRA's one-year time requirement and filed his petition within sixty days of the date his claim could have first been brought. We further would conclude that the particular facts and circumstances of this case require the disqualification of the DA from further proceedings. We would hold that, on remand, the President Judge of the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas must refer the matter to the Office of the Attorney General ("OAG") who, in the absence of a conflict, would represent the Commonwealth in this matter. The PCRA court would also be ordered to give renewed consideration to Robinson's requests to amend his PCRA petition, for discovery and for an evidentiary hearing.2
The backdrop of this case is an email scandal that first came to light in 2014 following an investigation conducted by former Attorney General Kathleen Kane into her predecessor's handling of an unrelated matter. This investigation uncovered emails sent from and received by members of her office on Commonwealth owned computers that contained racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, and religiously and ethnically insensitive content. Their piecemeal release revealed individuals from all three branches of the Commonwealth's government as having sent and/or received these emails.
Of relevance to the case at bar, in October 2014, news articles reported that former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery sent and received numerous of these offensive emails. Shortly thereafter, Eakin was also implicated in the scandal. As discussed herein, the story of Eakin's involvement broke on or about October 8, 2014, and continued to evolve and develop through his suspension from judicial and administrative responsibilities on December 22, 2015, resignation on March 15, 2016, and decision by the Court of Judicial Discipline ("CJD") on March 24, 2016.
With this background in mind, we turn to the case before us. On March 13, 1997, a jury convicted Robinson of the attempted murder of Tara Hodge, Robinson's on-again/off-again paramour, and the first-degree murder of Rashawn Bass, Hodge's boyfriend.3 The evidence at trial revealed that on June 29, 1996, sometime after receiving a letter from Hodge ending their relationship, Robinson drove from his home outside of Washington, D.C. to her apartment in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Upon learning that she was not alone, Robinson and Hodge began to argue. Robinson requested that Hodge tell her guest to leave. When she refused, Robinson pulled a gun from his waistband and shot Hodge in the head. She lost consciousness but survived. Robinson then went into the bathroom where Bass was showering and shot him seven times, killing him almost instantly. Robinson then fled the scene.
The elected DA at that time, Merle L. Ebert, Jr. ("Ebert"), tried the case on behalf of the Commonwealth. The theme of the prosecution was that Robinson was a gun-toting criminal from the "big city" who came to Cumberland County with the intent to kill because he had been "disrespected" by Hodge.4 See, e.g., N.T. 3/12/1997, at 6; N.T., 3/13/1997, at 271, 273, 277. In his defense, Robinson did not deny that he shot both Hodge and Bass, but contended that he lacked the intent to kill or to attempt to kill. See N.T., 3/13/1997, at 265-67; N.T., 3/14/1997, at 366-67.
The jury sentenced Robinson to death the following day. This Court affirmed his judgment of sentence on November 24, 1998. Commonwealth v. Robinson, 554 Pa. 293, 721 A.2d 344 (1998) ("Robinson I"). The United States Supreme Court denied his petition for certiorari on January 10, 2000, at which time Robinson's judgment of sentence became final. Robinson v. Pennsylvania, 528 U.S. 1082, 120 S.Ct. 804, 145 L.Ed.2d 677 (2000); see 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(3) ().
Represented by new counsel, Robinson filed a timely PCRA petition on October 16, 2000. Following an evidentiary hearing, the Honorable Edgar B. Bayley, who also served as the trial court judge, denied the petition on April 22, 2002.
Robinson appealed the denial of his PCRA petition to this Court. Robinson raised twelve issues for the Court's review. In a divided four-to-three opinion, this Court affirmed. The majority opinion, authored by Eakin, found five issues were previously litigated and the remaining seven meritless. Commonwealth v. Robinson, 583 Pa. 358, 877 A.2d 433 (2005) ("Robinson II"). Notably, Robinson, an African-American man, raised a claim that the DA's portrayal of him as a big-city criminal who killed out of retribution for perceived disrespect "had a definite racial overtone" that constituted prosecutorial misconduct and that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the DA's injection of race into the case.5 Id. at 441. He further alleged counsel's ineffectiveness for failing to present evidence at his penalty phase hearing regarding, inter alia, his exposure to domestic violence. Id. at 438 n.3.6
In the majority opinion, Eakin did not specifically address the domestic abuse averment, but rather decided the issue based on trial counsel's efforts to obtain information about Robinson's family background. See id. at 448. The majority opinion addressed the race-related argument by finding that the Commonwealth did nothing improper: "Here, the prosecutor's remarks were not a deliberate attempt to destroy the objectivity of the jury, but merely summarized the evidence presented at trial with oratorical flair permitted during argument." Id. at 442. Because the DA did not mention Robinson's race, the majority concluded that the claim that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object was without merit. Then-Justice (now-Chief Justice) Saylor authored a comprehensive dissenting opinion wherein he stated his view that the prosecutor's statements in this latter regard were improper. Id. at 451 (Saylor, J., dissenting).7
In 2005, Ebert was elected to serve as a judge in the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas and was succeeded as DA by Attorney David J. Freed ("Freed"). Robinson filed a counseled writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and Chief Deputy DA Matthew P. Smith ("Smith") and Assistant DA Charles J. Volkert, Jr. (now Chief Deputy DA) began representing the Commonwealth in this matter. The district court denied relief on September 30, 2011. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the denial and the United States Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari on October 5, 2015.
With his habeas petition pending before the Third Circuit, Robinson filed a second PCRA petition pro se in the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas on September 30, 2013. The court appointed counsel on October 3, 2013, who filed an amended petition on Robinson's behalf. The PCRA court dismissed the petition as untimely, and this Court affirmed on June 20, 2016. See Commonwealth v. Robinson, 635 Pa. 592, 139 A.3d 178 (2016) ("Robinson III").
Robinson filed the instant, counseled PCRA petition on November 30, 2015, while decision on his second petition was pending before this Court.8 In this petition, Robinson sought reinstatement of his appellate rights from his first PCRA petition, alleging newly discovered facts regarding Eakin's transmission and receipt of offensive emails and possible ex parte communication with prosecutors.9 Robinson alleged a violation of his due process rights based on Eakin's bias or the appearance of bias. Robinson noted that he raised claims in his first PCRA appeal, decided by Eakin, concerning the improper injection of race into his guilt phase trial by Ebert and the failure of his counsel to present evidence of his exposure to domestic violence — abuse sustained by his mother and sister at the hands of his father — as a mitigating circumstance at his penalty phase hearing. PCRA Petition, 11/30/2015, ¶¶ 39-42.
According to Robinson, Eakin's involvement in the email scandal was not known until October 8, 2015, when an online news outlet, philly.com, published the content of some of the emails that Eakin had sent and received from a personal email account he created using the pseudonym "John Smith." Id., ¶ 43 (citing William Bender, A Supreme...
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