Commonwealth v. Williams

• Decision Date: 19 February 2014
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant v. James T. WILLIAMS, Appellee.

86 A.3d 771

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant

v.James T. WILLIAMS, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Submitted Nov. 13, 2012.

Decided Feb. 19, 2014.

Heather F. Gallagher, James Bernard Martin, Lehigh County District Attorney's Office, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Stuart Brian Lev, Defender Association of Philadelphia, for James T. Williams.

James T. Williams, pro se.

BEFORE: CASTILLE, C.J., SAYLOR, EAKIN, BAER, TODD, McCAFFERY, STEVENS, JJ.

OPINION

Chief Justice CASTILLE.

In this capital case pending on collateral review, the Commonwealth appeals the order of the Court of Common Pleas of Lehigh County granting the discovery motion of appellee James T. Williams in connection with his petition filed under the Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”). See42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541–9546.¹ The discovery order directed the Commonwealth to produce to appellee's standby counsel “all notes” prepared by the trial prosecutor “concerning interviews, witness preparation sessions, [and] witness examination outlines” for four of appellee's co-conspirators who were also witnesses at trial. At this Court's request, the parties have also addressed the jurisdictional issue of whether the PCRA court's disposition is a collateral order, appealable pursuant to Rule of Appellate Procedure 313. SeePa.R.A.P. 313. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the PCRA court's discovery order is immediately appealable pursuant to Rule 313. We further conclude that the PCRA court did not have “good cause” to issue the discovery order under Rule of Criminal Procedure 902(E)(2), the rule governing PCRA discovery in capital cases. Accordingly, we vacate the discovery order and remand for final resolution of appellee's PCRA petition.

I. Background

On May 29, 1995, appellee murdered Richard White, shooting White three times with a semi-automatic weapon during a drug transaction-related robbery, in which appellee was implicated along with co-conspirators Lamar Peterson, Curtis French, Ralph Logan, and Luis Avila. Appellee was charged with first-degree murder and related crimes, and was tried in the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas, before the Honorable Edward D. Reibman. Appellee represented himself at trial, with standby counsel assisting; then-Assistant District Attorney (“ADA”) Maria L. Dantos, Esq., represented the Commonwealth. In 2007, Ms. Dantos was appointed, and later was elected, to the bench of the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas.

At trial, appellee challenged the credibility of the Commonwealth's witnesses, notably including his co-conspirators and a jail-house informant (a fellow inmate at the Lehigh County Prison, David Miller). Appellee also made personal accusations against the Commonwealth prosecutors, police officers, criminal justice personnel, and against his own standby counsel. Appellee imagined that he was the victim of a vast statewide conspiracy. Appellee called fellow inmate Louis Washington to testify, but then challenged Washington's credibility when Washington testified unfavorably against appellee. Specifically, Washington testified that appellee attempted to threaten him into arranging for an alibi witness (Washington's mother), but instead Washington alerted the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth then arranged for a state trooper to portray Washington's mother at the meeting during which appellee discussed the planned false alibi testimony. An audio recording of the meeting and the trooper's testimony were offered into evidence at trial.

In August 2001, a jury convicted appellee of first-degree murder, robbery, and conspiracy to commit robbery. Appellee was sentenced to death. On direct appeal, this Court affirmed the judgment of sentence. Commonwealth v. Williams, 586 Pa. 553, 896 A.2d 523 (2006), cert. denied,549 U.S. 1213, 127 S.Ct. 1253, 167 L.Ed.2d 88 (2007). In the 2006 opinion, the Court recounted in detail the events surrounding Mr. White's murder.

On March 9, 2007, appellee filed a pro se petition for relief pursuant to the PCRA. Judge Reibman appointed as stand-by counsel the Federal Community Defender Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (“FCDO”). ² In July 2009, following several extensions, appellee filed an amended 189–page petition for post-conviction relief with the aid of the FCDO. On January 7, 2010, the Commonwealth filed a motion to dismiss the PCRA petition.

In March 2010, Judge Reibman recused himself sua sponte in light of Judge Dantos's current position on the Lehigh County bench. Indeed, the entire Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas bench recused and then-President Judge William H. Platt requested the appointment of an out-of-county judge to preside over the matter. This Court appointed Senior Judge John L. Braxton.

In December 2010, Judge Braxton addressed a discovery motion appellee filed in December 2009 and granted appellee relief in part, ordering the Commonwealth to provide appellee with all pre-trial and post-trial communications between witness Louis Washington and former ADA Dantos. The Commonwealth complied. In January 2011, appellee filed a supplementary discovery motion and the PCRA court again granted relief in part, ordering the Lehigh County Prison to provide records reflecting the visitors for Commonwealth trial witnesses Miller, Peterson, French, Logan, and Avila, as well as appellee's witness Washington, between May 1, 1995 and January 31, 2001. On March 23, 2011, the court ordered the Lehigh County Prison to produce the prison records of Washington, Peterson, and French. The PCRA court then held hearings on appellee's claims on March 21 through 24, 2011.

On May 23, 2011, standby counsel and appellee renewed a discovery request for the trial notes of former ADA Dantos regarding “interviews, witness preparation sessions, [and] witness examination outlines” for Peterson, French, Logan, and Avila; the Commonwealth did not receive a copy of the motion until May 25, 2011. The PCRA court entered an order—erroneously dated May 20 but docketed on May 25, 2011—granting appellee's motion without first affording the Commonwealth an opportunity to be heard. The order stated that the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office was to “produce to standby counsel” “[a]ll notes” of former ADA Dantos “concerning interviews, witness preparation sessions, [and] witness examination outlines for Luis Avila, Ralph Logan, Lamar Peterson, and Curtis French.” On May 27, 2011, the Commonwealth immediately asked for reconsideration.

During the continuation of PCRA hearings, on June 6, 2011, the PCRA court heard argument on the Commonwealth's reconsideration motion. First, the Commonwealth objected that it did not have the opportunity to be heard on appellee's discovery motion before it was granted. Judge Braxton explained that he had signed the order before boarding an airplane, and that he had difficulty communicating with the parties because he presided over cases in numerous counties throughout Pennsylvania. Judge Braxton did not identify any exigency to defeat the Commonwealth's right to respond before the Commonwealth was ordered to turn over material from its trial file. On the discovery motion's merits, the Commonwealth argued that the motion should not have been granted because it requested material protected by the work product doctrine and did not meet the “good cause” standard set forth in Criminal Rule 902(E)(2) (no discovery permitted in first capital PCRA proceeding except upon leave of court after showing of good cause). The Commonwealth also asked the Court to review former ADA Dantos's testimony from the earlier hearing because she had testified that she did not prepare notes related to all of the witnesses, and that, if any of the information she had gleaned during pre-trial interviews had been material, exculpatory or impeaching she would have disclosed it under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963).

Appellee responded by claiming that the duty to disclose defeats the work product doctrine. Furthermore, according to appellee, he did not have to accept or rely on what former ADA Dantos said about the information contained in her file notes, because her testimony that the “witnesses were changing the stories to her” gave him good cause for discovery of her notes under Brady. See N.T., 6/6/11, at 204–08, 210, 214–15. The PCRA court then denied the motion for reconsideration but stayed its discovery order to allow the Commonwealth to pursue this appeal. Id. at 219. The court ordered that the file notes be preserved, and the Commonwealth complied. The Commonwealth timely appealed the PCRA court's discovery order. In the meantime, the PCRA court proceeded with hearings on appellee's PCRA petition. The PCRA court did not file a Pa.R.A.P. 1925 opinion explaining its discovery order, nor did it direct the Commonwealth to file a Statement of Errors Complained of on Appeal.

In September 2011, this Court placed the appeal on hold pending resolution of the appeals in Commonwealth v. Harris, 8 EAP 2009 (later decision reported at 612 Pa. 576, 32 A.3d 243 (2011)), and Commonwealth v. Pruitt, 630 CAP (later decision reported at 615 Pa. 182, 41 A.3d 1289 (2012) ( per curiam )). Having resolved those appeals, the Court acted upon the parties' jurisdictional statements and ordered the matter to be submitted on the briefs. In a per curiam order entered on May 1, 2012, we noted that consideration of jurisdiction was postponed to the merits stage, and directed the parties to brief the following issue before addressing their substantive claims:

1. Whether the PCRA court's discovery order is appealable as a collateral order under Pa.R.A.P. 313 and this Court's decisions in Commonwealth v. Harris , 32 A.3d 243 (Pa.2011), Commonwealth v. Kennedy , 876 A.2d 939 (Pa.2005), [and] Commonwealth v. Dennis , 859 A.2d 1270 (Pa.2004), and specifically:

(a) whether PCRA discovery orders that allegedly violate rules of discovery, see e.g.,Pa....