Commonwealth v. Speight
| Decision Date | 29 April 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 778 CAP,778 CAP |
| Citation | 249 A.3d 1075 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Melvin SPEIGHT, Appellant |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Emily Patricia Daly, Esq., Lawrence Jonathan Goode, Esq., Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, for Appellee.
Timothy Patrick Kane, Esq., Federal Community Defender's Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, for Appellant.
OPINION
In 2017, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied appellant Melvin Speight's petition for a writ of habeas corpus relative to challenges to the guilt phase of his state criminal trial, but granted relief with respect to his death sentence and remanded the case to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for resentencing. In granting this limited penalty-phase relief the District Court's order cited only the agreement of the parties indicating such relief was unopposed. For that reason, when appellant's case finally returned to the state court for resentencing in 2019, the court declined to resentence him. The sentencing court took the position that the federal District Court lacked authority to grant relief based exclusively on the agreement of the parties in the absence of an independent judicial determination consistent with 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) (). As a result, the sentencing court issued an order declaring appellant's "sentence of death stands." We now vacate the court's order and remand for resentencing.
The facts supporting appellant's convictions are largely irrelevant to the issues before us. It suffices to say he was convicted in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in 1993 of two counts of first-degree murder and related offenses and sentenced to death. This Court affirmed his judgment of sentence on direct appeal and, later, twice affirmed orders denying him post-conviction relief. Commonwealth v. Speight , 544 Pa. 451, 677 A.2d 317 (1996), cert. denied , 519 U.S. 1119, 117 S.Ct. 967, 136 L.Ed.2d 852 (1997) ; Commonwealth v. Speight , 578 Pa. 520, 854 A.2d 450 (2004) ; Commonwealth v. Speight , 604 Pa. 492, 986 A.2d 759 (2009) (per curiam ).
Appellant also sought relief in the federal courts. In 2005, he petitioned the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for a writ of habeas corpus raising seventeen claims for relief — some of which pointedly attacked the validity of his death sentence. See Speight v. Beard , No. CV 04-4110, 2017 WL 914907, at *3 (E.D. Pa. Mar. 7, 2017) (Quiñones Alejandro, J.). For its part, the Commonwealth, represented by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, filed an answer on December 22, 2014, in which it contested appellant's claims pertaining to his convictions but raised no procedural or substantive defenses to the claims of sentencing error. Most relevant for our purposes, the Commonwealth conveyed to the court that it was " ‘not contest[ing] a conditional grant of relief as to [appellant]’s death sentence[,]’ " and, further, that it " ‘will not seek a new capital sentencing proceeding in connection with this case.’ " Id. , quoting Response to Habeas Petition, 12/22/2014, at 10 n.11.1
The District Court subsequently referred the case to a magistrate judge to issue a report and recommendation on appellant's petition. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) (). "Following an extensive review of [appellant]’s claims and the record," the magistrate judge recommended the "petition for habeas corpus relief be denied and dismissed as to the guilt phase of [appellant]’s trial, and ... [appellant]’s sentence of death be vacated and [appellant] sentenced to life imprisonment, in accordance with [the Commonwealth's] representations and stipulation to the grant of this limited relief." Speight v. Beard , No. CV 04-4110, 2016 WL 8459847, at *4 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 29, 2016) (Caracappa, C.M.J.).2 Appellant filed objections to the magistrate judge's report and the Commonwealth responded.
On March 7, 2017, the District Court issued an order and written opinion approving and adopting the magistrate judge's recommendations to deny appellant guilt-phase relief but grant penalty-phase relief. See Speight , 2017 WL 914907, at *1 ( ). The District Court's accompanying order mirrored the court's written opinion, stating in relevant part:
With respect to the penalty of death, upon agreement of [appellant] and [the Commonwealth], the petition for a writ of habeas corpus is GRANTED , and [appellant]’s case is remanded to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for re-sentencing.
District Court Order, 3/7/2017, at 1 (emphasis in original). According to appellant, as a consequence of this order the Department of Corrections removed him from death row and transferred him to general population. See Appellant's Brief at 14. Meanwhile, he elaborates, he sought a certificate of appealability from the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit with respect to the denial of his guilt phase claims, which was denied on June 15, 2018, at docket number 17-1725.
The case then returned to the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia and was assigned to the (now retired) Honorable Kathryn Streeter Lewis. But when the parties jointly requested that the court schedule a resentencing hearing in conformity with the District Court's order, Judge Streeter Lewis instead directed the parties to file memoranda addressing the legal effect of the federal court's grant of relief premised only on the parties’ agreement, especially in light of the decisions in Commonwealth v. Brown , 649 Pa. 293, 196 A.3d 130 (2018), and Sibron v. New York , 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968).3 On March 8, 2019, appellant complied and filed a memorandum in which he asserted neither Brown nor Sibron "alter the conclusion that the federal court Order binds this Court." Appellant's Memorandum, 3/8/2019, at 4. Moreover, he argued those cases are distinguishable in that they both involved situations in which courts were deciding whether to accept a prosecutor's confession of error; they did not address the present circumstances in which a federal court already exercised its judgment and granted habeas relief. See id . The Commonwealth fully agreed with this assessment. See Commonwealth's Memorandum, 3/8/2019, at 1.
But Judge Streeter Lewis was not persuaded. On March 20, 2019, she issued an order declaring the court "has no authority to vacate [appellant]’s sentence ... pending an independent judicial determination by the [f]ederal court of [appellant]’s habeas corpus death penalty claim as required pursuant to 28 U.S.C.A. § 2254(d)(1)(2)." Trial Court Order, 3/20/2019, at 1-2. In support of this order, Judge Streeter Lewis reasoned: "An agreement between the parties, absent a judicial determination of a violation of clearly established [f]ederal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court or an unreasonable determination of facts in light of the evidence presented in the [s]tate court proceeding, is not sufficient to warrant the grant of habeas corpus relief, direct that the original sentence imposed be vacated, and order resentencing." Id . at 2, citing, e.g. , Sibron , supra ; Young , supra ; Brown , supra . Judge Streeter Lewis ultimately concluded that, "pending a determination on the merits of [appellant]’s death penalty claim, pursuant to [ Section 2254(d) ] by the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, [appellant]’s sentence of death stands ." Id . (emphasis added).
Appellant filed an unopposed motion for reconsideration on April 4, 2019, in which he contended the court's March 20th order "is a nullity because it purports to hold [him] under a sentence of death that was invalidated as a matter of law two years ago." Motion to Reconsider, 4/4/2019, at 2; see also id . at 5 (). However, less than two weeks later the Honorable Lillian H. Ransom was appointed to take over the case, as Judge Streeter Lewis was no longer sitting in the jurisdiction due to her retirement from the bench. See Appointment Order, 4/17/2019, at 1. Five days after that, on April 22, 2019, appellant filed the present appeal, thereby divesting the common pleas court of jurisdiction to rule upon his motion for reconsideration of Judge Streeter Lewis's order, which was entered more than 30 days prior to that point. See Pa.R.A.P. 1701(a) (); 42 Pa.C.S. § 5505 (...
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