Commonwealth v. Sheets

• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court
• Writing for the Court: OPINION BY OLSON, J.
• Citation: Commonwealth v. Sheets, 302 A.3d 145 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2023)
• Docket Number: 580 MDA 2022,No. 580 MDA 2022
• Decision Date: 10 August 2023
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Robert David SHEETS, Appellant

302 A.3d 145

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Robert David SHEETS, Appellant

No. 580 MDA 2022

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Submitted March 20, 2023

Filed: August 10, 2023

Shaka M. Johnson, Philadelphia, for appellant.

Andrew J. Gonzalez, Assistant District Attorney, Lancaster, for Commonwealth, appellee.

BEFORE: OLSON, J., McCAFFERY, J., and COLINS, J. ^*

OPINION BY OLSON, J.:

Appellant, Robert David Sheets, appeals from the judgment of sentence entered on March 10, 2022. We affirm.

The Commonwealth charged Appellant with two counts of attempted murder, as well as other crimes. The case proceeded to a jury trial in January 2022. During Appellant's trial, the following evidence was presented.

The victim in this case, Justin Murphy (hereinafter "the Victim"), testified that, prior to the events of the case, he and Appellant were friends and would "hang out every now and then." N.T. Trial, 1/4/22, at 109. According to the Victim, at 10:00 or 10:30 p.m. on August 14, 2017, Appellant came to his home. When the Victim opened the door and allowed Appellant into his home, he noticed that Appellant "seemed very strange" and paranoid and "kept looking out the windows, walking back and forth." Id. at 111.

The Victim testified that Appellant "said he needed gas." At the time, the Victim had "close to $400.00" in his wallet; the Victim then opened his wallet in front of Appellant and gave Appellant $10.00. Appellant also asked to use the Victim's cell phone and, since the Victim "wasn't sure if [Appellant] would bring [the cell phone] back or not[, the Victim] offered [to] ride with [Appellant] down the street to get gas and come back home." Id. at 111-112.

The Victim testified:

We left my house and we began driving just very randomly through Quarryville, through New Providence, a couple of local towns. I was getting very annoyed. I wanted to go back home and go to bed. I had to go to work the next day. I couldn't figure out what was going on or why he was acting so erratically. ... We just kept driving and turning around at random intersections. And this went on probably like a half hour or so and then we wound up at a house in Conestoga.

Id. at 113.

As the Victim testified, Appellant pulled into a driveway of a house, parked the car, and told the Victim to get out of the car. The Victim got out of the car and Appellant began speaking with an unknown male who was at the premises. After a few minutes, Appellant and the male approached the Victim and Appellant told the Victim: "come with me, there's something I want to show you in the woods." Id. at 116. As the Victim testified:

We went down in the woods and that's when [Appellant] told me to stand there and he came up behind me with his arms behind me and, like, in a motion to snap my neck. I spun around and at that point in time it was like out of nowhere, he just had a pistol to my chest point-blank. He pulled the trigger. I see a big flash of fire and just everything – I blacked out immediately.

Id. at 118.

The Victim testified that, immediately before he fell unconscious, he saw Appellant reach into his back pocket and take his wallet. Id.

As the Victim testified, he remembered waking up in the late morning of the following day, when it was "very hot" outside. Id. at 119. He testified:

I tried crawling around to get up to move to walk away and at that point I couldn't move. So I decided I would holler for help. So I remember hollering for help. And it wasn't very long after that that [Appellant], I guess he had heard my cry for help and he was the one that responded.

I remember him walking down to where I was at and I remember thinking to myself, what did I just do. I didn't think he would hear my cry for help. I thought maybe somebody else would. ...

[Appellant] said I thought I did you in last night. He says, now I'm going to take care of you for good, something to that effect. Like now I'm going to do you in. And I remember just saying, like, Bobby, please or, like, Bobby, don't. I tried to say something quick, but it didn't matter. ...

[Appellant] had a gun, a pistol in one hand, he had a hatchet in the other. And I just remember a lot of blood. I was struck twice on the top of my head with the hatchet, down the left side of my neck. I remember the gunshots going off twice. The first one just grazed the back of my head. It didn't go in. The second one went in behind my ear. The bullet went down my jawbone and got lodged underneath my tongue. At that point I passed out again.

Id. at 119-120.

The Victim testified that he did not know how long he was unconscious, but when he woke up again it was "almost dark" outside. Id. at 121. He testified:

So I remember just being in the cornfield. It rained. It thunderstormed that night. It was hot. It was horrible. And I ... remember kind of, like, waking up and I'd give myself a number, like number [ten], and I'd try to run through [ten] sets of cornrows and I'd fall back down and I'd pass out again. And I'd keep trying to do it over. I had no clue if I was going in circles. You know, which direction I was heading through the cornfield. This went on for what seemed to be forever. I guess it was a matter of hours before I did manage to escape the cornfield. It was the following day. It was daylight then. It was approximately [4:00] or 4:30 [in the afternoon] when I did get out of the cornfield to find help.

Id. at 122.

A homeowner found Appellant at 4:30 p.m. on August 16, 2017 and called 911. Id. at 92-101 and 123.

The Victim was transported to Lancaster General Hospital, where Dr. Daniel Wu treated him. Dr. Wu testified that the Victim was suffering from: a bullet wound behind his ear, with the bullet "lodged underneath his tongue;" a bullet wound in the front of his chest, with "bullet fragments [in] the area of [the Victim's] spine;" "about 1.7 liters of blood in his right lung;" rib fractures from the path of the bullet; a broken jaw bone from the path of the bullet; scalp lacerations, which were "between [three] and [five] centimeters, which would be about [two] inches;" and, a neck laceration, which was "measured as around [seven to eight] centimeters, which is about [three to four] inches." N.T. Trial, 1/5/22, at 192-195. Dr. Wu also testified that the Victim was suffering from rhabdomyolysis, acute blood anemia, and subcutaneous gas in the chest. Id. at 195.

Dr. Wu testified that the Victim's injuries were life-threatening and, "if [the Victim] didn't receive the treatment when he did, [the Victim] could [ ] have died from [his] injuries." Id. at 198.

The Victim told the police that Appellant was the individual who had shot him and the police began searching for Appellant. Appellant's aunt, Donna Rentz, testified that, on August 17, 2017, Appellant showed up unannounced at her Maryland home and asked that she provide him with a telephone number. Id. at 227. Ms. Rentz testified that she knew the police were looking for Appellant and she asked Appellant to turn himself in. She testified that Appellant twice told her "I can't, Aunt Donna, I can't." Id. at 229.

Police officer Andrew Snow of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Police Department testified that, on August 19, 2017, a license plate reader alerted him to the fact that Appellant's vehicle was traveling on a nearby, Virginia road. Id. at 233. He testified that he activated his lights and siren and, as he began to catch up to Appellant's vehicle, "the vehicle began to accelerate rapidly." Id. at 234. Officer Snow testified that this led to a 30-mile, cross-county chase, where "[w]e were consistently over [100] miles an hour and frequently over 110 miles an hour." Id. at 235. The high-speed chase finally ended when "one of [the police] cruisers went across the median and conducted a PIT" maneuver. ¹ Id. at 236.

After his arrest, Appellant spoke with Pennsylvania State Police Trooper First Class Michael A. Snyder. Appellant told Trooper Snyder: "I'm afraid for my family .... I did what I had to do. The mob made me do it." Id. at 270-271.

The jury found Appellant guilty of two counts of attempted murder and one count of robbery. ² On March 10, 2022, the trial court sentenced Appellant to serve an aggregate term of 25 to 60 years in prison for his convictions. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal. He raises the following claims to this Court:

1. Was the evidence insufficient to sustain [Appellant's] conviction for two separate attempted murder counts in that the evidence failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that [Appellant] attempted to murder [the Victim]?

2. Did the trial court abuse its discretion in sentencing [Appellant] on two counts of criminal homicide wherein the evidence showed that this was one continuing event?

3. Did the trial court err and abuse its discretion by imposing an unreasonable and manifestly excessive sentence that failed to adhere to the general sentencing principles set forth in 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9721(b), in that the [trial court] imposed a sentence that exceeded what was necessary to protect the public, failed to consider [Appellant's] background and character fully, and imposed a sentence that was well beyond what was necessary to foster the rehabilitative needs of [Appellant]?

4. Did the trial court abuse its discretion in imposing [Appellant's sentence] wherein the [trial] court failed to state any reasons on the record for the sentence imposed?

Appellant's Brief at 5 (some capitalization omitted). ³

First, Appellant claims that the evidence was insufficient to convict him of either count of attempted murder.

We review Appellant's sufficiency of the evidence challenge under the following standard:

The standard we apply in reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence is whether viewing all the evidence admitted at trial in the light most favorable to the verdict winner, there is sufficient evidence to enable the fact-finder to find every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. In applying

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