Commonwealth v. Santana

• Decision Date: 22 December 2021
• Docket Number: No. 23 MAP 2021,23 MAP 2021
• Citation: 266 A.3d 528
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant v. David SANTANA, Appellee
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

266 A.3d 528

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant

v.David SANTANA, Appellee

No. 23 MAP 2021

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued: October 26, 2021

Decided: December 22, 2021

Elmer D. Christine, Jr., David Nicholas Marra, Monroe County District Attorney's Office, Stroudsburg, PA, for Appellant.

Eric Carl Closs, James Paul Gregor, Monroe County Public Defender's Office, Stroudsburg, PA, for Appellee.

BAER, C.J., SAYLOR, TODD, DONOHUE, DOUGHERTY, WECHT, MUNDY, JJ.

OPINION

JUSTICE WECHT

In this case, we must decide whether our decision in Commonwealth v. Muniz ¹ —wherein we held that the Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act ("SORNA")² constituted a punitive regulatory scheme that, when imposed retroactively to sex offenders who committed their offenses prior to SORNA's enactment, amounted to an unconstitutional ex post-facto law³ —applies with equal force to offenders whose triggering offenses occurred in another state. We conclude that it does. Therefore, we affirm the order of the Superior Court.

In 1983, David Santana was convicted of rape in New York.⁴ At the time, neither New York nor Pennsylvania had enacted a sex offender registration scheme. However, as time passed—and prompted by federal law⁵ —states began enacting statutory schemes aimed at monitoring sexual offenders by requiring them to comply with strict registration and notification requirements. In 1995, New York passed the "Sex Offender Registration Act" ("SORA"),⁶ which became effective in January 1996. Pennsylvania followed suit, enacting the first version of Megan's Law in 1995.⁷

Like Megan's Law and SORNA, New York's SORA applied retroactively,⁸ enveloping, among others, those offenders who had been convicted of certain triggering offenses (including rape) and who were on probation or parole at the time of its enactment. Santana met these criteria. Because Santana was designated a level three offender,⁹ he was required to comply with SORA's terms and conditions for the remainder of his life.

Santana appears to have complied with SORA during his residency in New York. In 2015—the year Santana moved from New York to Pennsylvania—SORNA, which replaced Megan's Law, had been in effect for approximately three years. Upon establishing a residence here, Santana no longer was required to register and report in New York. However, the relocation triggered automatically a duty to register and report in Pennsylvania under SORNA's mandates, which are stricter than those imposed by SORA.¹⁰ Among a litany of new substantive provisions, SORNA created a three-tiered system to categorize offenders. SORNA designated rape as a Tier III offense.¹¹ Tier III offenses subjected the offender to lifetime registration and reporting.¹² While some of the particulars of Santana's obligations may have changed when his obligations transferred from SORA to SORNA (such as how promptly he was required to report changes in his identifying information) the duration did not. Both statutory schemes required lifetime compliance.

Upon establishing a residence here, Santana immediately registered himself with the Pennsylvania State Police ("PSP") and began complying with SORNA. During his first eleven months of living in Pennsylvania, Santana checked in with the PSP six times. However, he was not entirely forthcoming with the information that he provided to the PSP at the check-ins. After an investigation, the PSP learned that Santana failed to inform them that he had: (1) created a telephone number; (2) terminated a telephone number; (3) started a new job; and (4) registered a telephone number and an email address on a Facebook account. For these infractions, Santana was arrested and charged with failure to provide accurate information under 18 Pa.C.S. § 4915.1(a)(3), a second-degree felony.¹³

Santana pleaded guilty to the offense. On July 18, 2017, the trial court sentenced Santana to two years and nine months to five years and six months in a state penitentiary. Then, on the very next day, this Court issued our decision in Muniz , invalidating the statutory scheme that Santana had just pleaded guilty to violating. Santana immediately filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea and to have the charges filed against him dismissed. Following Muniz ’ lead, Santana argued that applying SORNA retroactively to his 1983 New York offense constituted an ex post facto violation no different from the one found in Muniz . The trial court denied the motion.

In an opinion issued contemporaneously with its order denying Santana's motion to withdraw his guilty plea, the trial court explained that its decision was predicated upon its determination that Muniz could be differentiated from the instant circumstances, and, thus, did not apply. While it was indisputable that SORNA was punitive and could not apply retroactively without violating our Constitutions, the trial court found that SORNA's application to Santana was not, in fact, a retroactive application. Muniz , the court opined, was limited to its narrow facts. That is, in the trial court's view, Muniz mandated relief only when the offender: (1) was a Pennsylvania resident and committed one of SORNA's triggering offenses within the borders of Pennsylvania; (2) was sentenced to serve a sentence in a Pennsylvania prison; (3) was obliged to comply with a version of Megan's Law upon release from that Pennsylvania prison for a period of ten years; (4) was released from prison and then absconded from Pennsylvania; and (5) was apprehended after SORNA took effect, which, when retroactively imposed, increased the offender's period of registration to the remainder of the offender's lifetime.¹⁴

The trial court then outlined what it perceived to be the key differences between Muniz and the circumstances of this case. Santana committed his crime and was convicted in New York, not Pennsylvania. He became obligated to comply with New York's SORA requirements only after he completed his New York sentence. Unlike Muniz, he was never incarcerated in Pennsylvania. The court emphasized that, under both SORA and SORNA, Santana was required to register and report for the remainder of his lifetime. Thus, by transferring here, Santana incurred no increase in the duration of his obligations. Because of these deviations from the core factual components of Muniz , the trial court believed Muniz to be wholly distinguishable. The court concluded that "[ Muniz and its progeny] did not address the situation where a registered sex offender, already established under the laws of another state, relocates to Pennsylvania after SORNA's enactment therefore invoking a clause in SORNA pertaining to registered sex offenders from other jurisdictions."¹⁵ Thus, the trial court held that, even though this Court already had deemed the statutory scheme unconstitutional when applied retroactively to sexual offenders whose crimes were committed in Pennsylvania, its application to Santana was not an ex post facto violation because Santana committed an offense in New York, moved here, had notice that SORNA already had taken effect, and already was required to register as a sexual offender.

Santana appealed. On October 20, 2020, an en banc panel of the Superior Court addressed the question of whether "the Commonwealth could constitutionally charge and convict [Santana] with failing to register in Pennsylvania, under SORNA, for a pre-SORNA crime that occurred in New York."¹⁶ Finding that the trial court focused upon "locality and not chronology,"¹⁷ the en banc panel reversed.

After setting forth the applicable legal and appellate standards associated with reviewing the denial of a post-sentence motion to withdraw a guilty plea, the court identified the overarching issue in the case: whether, as a matter of law, Santana could be convicted of failing to register as a sexual offender. To convict Santana of that offense, the Commonwealth had to prove that Santana was subject to registration under SORNA. If Muniz governs Santana's unique circumstances, then he never was required to register, and he could not be convicted of the crime. Thus, the task before the en banc panel was ascertaining the reach of our Muniz ruling.

In Muniz , this Court held that: "1) SORNA's registration provisions constitute punishment notwithstanding the General Assembly's identification of the provisions as nonpunitive; 2) retroactive application of SORNA's registration provisions violate the federal Ex Post Facto Clause; and 3) retroactive application of SORNA's registration provision also violates the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution."¹⁸ Despite the facial breadth of these conclusions, the trial court found that Muniz applies only in the limited situation in which a person commits a Pennsylvania crime during Megan's Law III's tenure, absconds, and then returns after SORNA has taken effect and increased the offender's registration period. The Superior Court rejected this narrow interpretation of Muniz . The panel noted that, in Commonwealth v. Butler ,¹⁹ this Court described the issue in Muniz as whether "the registration requirements of SORNA constituted criminal punishment" for purposes of an ex post facto analysis.²⁰ In no way did we condition the statement of that inquiry upon the unique facts in the case. Nor did we do so in our analysis in Muniz itself. The Superior Court determined, "[f]ar from suggesting that Muniz applies only to defendants who commit their crimes under Megan's Law III and flee the Commonwealth, the Butler Court clarified that the result in Muniz stemmed from the text of SORNA and the punishment that it inflicts upon registrants."²¹

Having concluded that Muniz was based upon the statutory elements and not the facts of that case, the en banc panel then shifted its attention to the question of whether Muniz nonetheless could be distinguished because Santana's 1983 New York rape conviction already required him to register for life. In other words, the court confronted the...