Sawyer v. Salamon
| Decision Date | 05 April 2023 |
| Docket Number | 1:19-CV-00062 |
| Parties | WALTER KEITH SAWYER, Petitioner, v. BOBBI JO SALAMON,[1] Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania |
Petitioner Walter Keith Sawyer initiated this action in January 2019 by filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C § 2254. Following a lengthy stay to exhaust additional claims in state court, Sawyer filed a supplemental habeas petition in September 2022, asserting four more grounds for relief. After careful consideration, the Court will deny Sawyer's Section 2254 petitions.
The convictions underlying the instant petition stem from an incident that occurred over a decade ago. In December 2012, Sawyer picked up a sixteen-year-old girl (B.B.) at a bus station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, offering to drive her to a gas station where she could buy food while she waited for her connecting bus to Hazelton.[2] B.B. accepted the offer and entered Sawyer's vehicle.[3] Instead of driving to a gas station, Sawyer took B.B. to a secluded parking lot under a nearby bridge and threatened B.B. that if she did not have sex with him, he would not drive her back to the bus station in time to catch the bus to Hazelton.[4] As Sawyer began to undress B.B. in the back seat of his car, a police officer-on routine patrol in the area-encountered Sawyer's vehicle.[5] The officer questioned B.B. about what was happening, and she informed him of Sawyer's attempt to coerce her into having sex.[6] The officer also questioned Sawyer, who provided the birth certificate and Social Security card of another individual as his own identification.[7]
In May 2013, Sawyer was charged with kidnapping,[8] unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, unlawful contact with a minor, criminal attempt indecent assault, open lewdness, false identification to law enforcement, and defiant trespass.[9] Following a jury trial, Sawyer was found guilty of kidnapping to facilitate a felony,[10] unlawful contact with a minor - open lewdness,[11] and false identification to law enforcement.[12],[13] In April 2014, he was sentenced to 25 to 50 years' imprisonment on the kidnapping count, a concurrent sentence of 5 to 10 years' imprisonment for unlawful contact with a minor, and a concurrent sentence of 1 to 2 years' imprisonment for false identification.[14] The 25- to 50-year sentence for kidnapping was the result of Sawyer being sentenced under the mandatory minimum “three strikes” provision of 42 PA. CONS. STAT. § 9714 for having two prior convictions for crimes of violence.[15]
Sawyer, through counsel, filed a timely post-sentence motion requesting modification of the sentence for the false identification conviction (as that sentence exceeded the maximum allowed by law) and raising a weight of the evidence claim.[16] Prior to the trial court ruling on that motion, Sawyer moved to proceed pro se.[17] The trial court held a hearing pursuant to Commonwealth v. Grazier,[18] informing Sawyer of his right to counsel and ultimately permitting Sawyer to exercise his constitutional prerogative to represent himself.[19] The trial court additionally modified the false-identification sentence during this hearing to reflect the one-year maximum penalty permitted by state law.[20]
Sawyer filed a pro se amendment to the counseled post-sentence motions, raising additional claims concerning (1) lack of subject matter jurisdiction due to the absence of an arrest warrant and preliminary arraignment; (2) failure by the Commonwealth to present at the preliminary hearing or by way of formal amendment to the charging documents the charge of unlawful contact with a minor; (3) a speedy trial violation; (4) unlawful delay by the prosecution resulting in destruction of video evidence; and (5) an illegal sentence under the recidivist statute because Sawyer did not have two prior crimes of violence.[21]
The trial court agreed with Sawyer only as to his illegal sentence claim, finding that he had just one prior crime of violence and therefore should have been sentenced to a mandatory minimum term of 10 to 20 years (rather than 25 to 50 years) on the kidnapping conviction.[22] Notably, in the body of the trial court's Rule 1925(a) opinion, the court correctly stated the revised kidnapping sentence as “120-240 months of incarceration”[23]; however, in the opinion's closing sentence- in what was likely a scrivener's error-the court indicated that it was resentencing Sawyer on the kidnapping charge to “120-140 months” of imprisonment.[24] This “120-140 months” amended judgment of sentence also appeared on the state-court docket.[25]
Sawyer, continuing to act pro se, appealed to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. The Superior Court rejected all Sawyer's claims except his challenge to the “120-140 months” sentence for kidnapping.[26] The panel assumed a scrivener's error but vacated the judgment of sentence and remanded to the trial court for resentencing.[27] The trial court, as expected, resentenced Sawyer to 120 to 240 months' imprisonment on the kidnapping charge.[28]
After resentencing, Sawyer attempted another direct appeal, raising seven issues for review.[29] The Superior Court, however, observed that Sawyer was “on direct appeal following remand for the limited purpose of correcting an illegal sentence,” and thus it could not reach the merits of six out of seven of Sawyer's claims.[30] The panel then reviewed and rejected Sawyer's only cognizable claim: a challenge to his new sentence under the recidivist statute.[31] In rejecting Sawyer's remaining claim, the Superior Court reasoned that the legal questions presented had already been resolved during Sawyer's previous appeal and therefore the “law of the case doctrine” precluded the court from revisiting those issues.[32] On December 28, 2016, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania denied Sawyer's petition for allowance of appeal.[33]
Sawyer then began his lengthy pursuit of post-conviction relief. He filed his first pro se petition under Pennsylvania's Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA)[34] in January 2017.[35] The PCRA court appointed counsel, who filed a supplemental PCRA petition in April 2017.[36] An evidentiary hearing was held on July 25, 2017, after which the PCRA court dismissed Sawyer's petition.[37] The Superior Court denied Sawyer's counseled PCRA appeal on October 16, 2018.[38] Sawyer filed his first Section 2254 petition in this Court approximately two months later.[39] On June 3, 2019, the Court granted Sawyer's request for a stay while he pursued additional state-court relief.[40] Sawyer had apparently filed a second pro se PCRA petition in May 2019, which was then followed by a counseled supplemental petition in September 2019.[41] In his second PCRA petition, Sawyer raised a claim regarding an alleged recantation made by B.B. to a private investigator hired by Sawyer's family.[42] The PCRA court dismissed Sawyer's second petition in January 2020 and the Superior Court affirmed.[43] The panel found that Sawyer had failed to establish why “he could not have obtained this information from the victim” earlier or why “he [had] waited until approximately six years after the incident and four years after his trial to pursue this information.”[44] The Superior Court concluded that Sawyer could not meet the “new facts” exception to the PCRA's one-year statute of limitations,[45] and therefore his petition was untimely.[46]
Undeterred, Sawyer filed a third pro se PCRA petition in January 2021, as well as a “Petition for Extraordinary Relief Illegal Sentence.”[47] In these post- conviction filings, Sawyer claimed that had been wrongfully sentenced under the recidivist statute (Section 9714) because he allegedly had no prior convictions that qualify as a “strike.”[48] The PCRA court dismissed Sawyer's third PCRA petition as untimely and, in May 2022, the Superior Court affirmed on the same basis.[49]
Sawyer returned to federal court in June 2022 and moved to lift the stay in his case.[50] He filed a “supplemental” Section 2254 petition three months later, raising four additional grounds for habeas relief.[51] Sawyer's initial and supplemental petitions are fully briefed and ripe for disposition.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)[52]mandates that petitioners demonstrate that they have “exhausted the remedies available in the courts of the State” before seeking federal habeas relief.[53] An exhausted claim is one that has been “fairly presented” to the state courts “by invoking one complete round of the State's established appellate review process,” and which has been adjudicated on the merits.[54] If a state prisoner has not fairly presented a claim to the state courts “but state law clearly forecloses review, exhaustion is excused, but the doctrine of procedural default may come into play.”[55] Generally, if a prisoner has procedurally defaulted on a claim by failing to raise it in state-court proceedings, a federal habeas court will not review the merits of the claim, even one that implicates constitutional concerns.[56]
A few limited exceptions to this rule exist. One exception is that “[a] prisoner may obtain federal review of a defaulted claim by showing cause for the default and prejudice from a violation of federal law.”[57] “Cause for a procedural default exists where something external to the petitioner, something that cannot fairly be attributed to him[,] . . . impeded [his] efforts to comply with the State's procedural rule.”[58] To establish prejudice, a petitioner must show not merely that there were errors that created a possibility of prejudice, but that they ...
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