Com. v. Jones, J. ( 2023 )

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NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
:
v. :
:
:
JONATHAN PAUL JONES :
:
Appellant : No. 1470 WDA 2021
Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered November 17, 2021
In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-02-CR-0009241-1999,
CP-02-CR-0009242-1999, CP-02-CR-0009243-1999
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
:
v. :
:
:
JONATHAN PAUL JONES :
:
Appellant : No. 740 WDA 2022
Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered November 17, 2021
In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-02-CR-0009242-1999
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
:
v. :
:
:
JONATHAN PAUL JONES :
:
Appellant : No. 741 WDA 2022
Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered November 17, 2021
In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-02-CR-0009241-1999
J-S42035-22
J-S42036-22
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
:
v. :
:
:
JONATHAN PAUL JONES :
:
Appellant : No. 742 WDA 2022
Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered November 17, 2021
In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-02-CR-0009243-1999
BEFORE: BOWES, J., OLSON, J., and COLINS, J.*
MEMORANDUM BY COLINS, J.: FILED: FEBRUARY 16, 2023
Jonathan Paul Jones, pro se, appeals from the order dismissing as
untimely his serial petition, likely his eleventh, filed pursuant to the Post
Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”). See 42 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546. As Jones has
failed to plead and prove an exception to the PCRA’s time-bar, we affirm.
None of the facts underpinning Jones’s convictions are relevant to the
present appeal. Briefly, in 2000, Jones was found guilty in a consolidated jury
trial of three counts of burglary, two counts of rape, two counts of aggravated
indecent assault, and one count each of robbery and simple assault.
Correspondingly, Jones was sentenced, in the aggregate, to 80 to 160 years
of incarceration. After this Court affirmed his judgment of sentence, our
Supreme Court denied his petition for allowance of appeal on September 16,
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* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.
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2003.1 Over the course of the next eighteen years, Jones filed multiple
unsuccessful PCRA petitions.
On July 20, 2021, Jones filed the present PCRA petition, which was
dismissed by the lower court as untimely and without exception. Thereafter,
Jones filed a timely notice of appeal.2
Preliminarily, we note the deficiencies inherent to Jones’s hand-written
brief. The brief, itself, contains four titled sections: (1) Scope of Review; (2)
Standard of Review; (3) Summary Statement (acting, seemingly as his
argument section, albeit undivided); and (4) Conclusion. See Appellant’s
Brief. However, in violation of Pennsylvania Rule of Appellate Procedure 2111,
inter alia, there is no statement of questions involved nor is there any
statement of the case. The omission of a statement of questions involved is
particularly problematic. See Pa.R.A.P. 2116(a) (“No question will be
considered unless it is stated in the statement of questions involved or is fairly
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1 It appears that Jones did not subsequently attempt to obtain any relief from
the United States Supreme Court.
2 While Jones timely filed the instant appeal, he originally only submitted a
single notice of appeal that listed all three docket numbers, in violation of
Commonwealth v. Walker, 185 A.3d 969, 971 (Pa. 2018) (requiring
appellants to file separate notices of appeal from single orders that resolve
issues on more than one docket). However, predicated on the more recent
decision of Commonwealth v. Young, 265 A.3d 462 (Pa. 2021), this Court
remanded the case so that Jones could file three new notices of appeal. See
265 A.3d at 477 (establishing that Pa.R.A.P. 902 “permits the appellate court,
in its discretion, to allow correction of [this type of] error”). Given that Jones
complied with our directive, we kept the original appeal docket number to
validate the timeliness of the present appeal and have further consolidated
the three post-remand dockets.
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suggested thereby.”). More fundamentally, while there are citations to
authority contained in the Summary Statement section, see Pa.R.A.P.
2119(b), Jones’s attempt to tether the facts germane to his appeal to those
citations lacks coherence.
On appeal, as best can be discerned given that there has been no
attempt to identify the questions he desires to present to this Court, Jones
chiefly contends: (1) the record is incomplete/inaccurate, specifically referring
to alleged events that occurred on April 9, 1999; and (2) there has been some
sort of Brady violation, see Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).
In reviewing the denial of a PCRA petition, we jointly consider whether
the lower court's determination is supported by the record and free of legal
error. See Commonwealth v. Ford, 947 A.2d 1251, 1252 (Pa. Super. 2008).
We will entertain disturbing the lower court's findings only where is no support
for its decision in the certified record. See Commonwealth v. Carr, 768 A.2d
1164, 1166 (Pa. Super. 2001).
Any PCRA petition, “including a second or subsequent petition[ must] be
filed within one year of the date [a] judgment [of sentence] becomes final[.]”
42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1). “[A] judgment becomes final at the conclusion of
direct review, including discretionary review in the Supreme Court of the
United States and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, or at the expiration of
time for seeking the review.” Id., at § 9545(b)(3). As the PCRA's timeliness
requirements are jurisdictional, courts cannot address the merits of an
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untimely petition. See Commonwealth v. Moore, 247 A.3d 990, 998 (Pa.
2021).
Here, our Supreme Court denied Jones’s petition for allowance of appeal
on September 16, 2003, and Jones filed the now at-issue petition on July 20,
2021. This filing was well beyond one year after his judgment of sentence
became final, which would have been at or around December 16, 2003. See
U.S. Sup.Ct. Rule 13(1) (allowing for the filing of a writ of certiorari with the
United States Supreme Court within ninety days after entry of an order
denying discretionary review from the state court of last resort).
As his petition is patently untimely, to overcome the PCRA's one-year
jurisdictional time-bar, Jones must plead and prove one of its three
exceptions:
(i) the failure to raise the claim previously was the result of
interference by government officials with the presentation of the
claim in violation of the Constitution or laws of this Commonwealth
or the Constitution or laws of the United States;
(ii) the facts upon which the claim is predicated were unknown to
the petitioner and could not have been ascertained by the exercise
of due diligence; or
(iii) the right asserted is a constitutional right that was recognized
by the Supreme Court of the United States or the Supreme Court
of Pennsylvania after the time period provided in this section and
has been held by that court to apply retroactively.
42 Pa.C.S.A § 9545(b)(1)(i)-(iii). In addition, “[a]ny petition invoking [one of
these] exception[s] … [must] be filed within one year of the date the claim
could have been presented.” Id., at § 9545(b)(2) (elongated, via a 2018
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amendment, from a sixty-day period to apply to claims arising on December
24, 2017, or thereafter).
In Jones’s petition, he avers that he has satisfied an exception to the
PCRA’s time-bar because of “ineffective assistant [sic] of counsel”;
“prosecutorial misconduct”; and a “deposition hearing” in February 2000 that
apparently violated his right to a fair trial. PCRA Petition, 7/20/21, at 3.
In his brief, however, Jones details the events of April 9, 1999, wherein
he was allegedly “illegally removed from a ‘state’ prison and transported from
Westmoreland County to Allegheny County for an illegal interrogation, lineup,
and arrest without the presence of a lawyer or judge.” Appellant’s Brief, at 6.
In addition, Jones emphasizes that he was later “threatened and harassed into
illegally providing a ‘blood’ and saliva sample.” Id. Also, Jones states that he
was left in jail without bail or a jail commitment order. See id. Broadly, Jones
takes issue with the events of this day having never been recorded or
presented at trial, framing those acts by governmental actors as illegal. The
brief suggests that he has circumvented the PCRA’s time-bar because: (1)
there has been interference by government officials and his counsel was
ineffective for not investigating this situation; and (2) there would be newly
discovered facts or evidence had due diligence been exercised in seeking out
this information that could have been used at trial. See id., at 8.
Despite the ambiguity between the claims contained in the PCRA petition
and the contents of the brief submitted in this appeal, neither provides a basis
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to conclude that Jones has met any of the PCRA’s exceptions. In his petition,
there is no mention of when he became aware of any element of the time-
bar-related claims he made therein.
While, in his brief, Jones provides a cursory acknowledgment of at least
two of the PCRA’s time-bar exceptions–government interference and newly
discovered facts–there is absolutely no explanation as to why his claims could
not have been presented earlier. Specifically, Jones does not illuminate any
dates as to when he apparently became aware of government interference
having impacted his case. Based on what is asserted in his brief, it seems clear
that Jones would have known what had happened on April 9, 1999, having
been, as the suffering party, integrally a part of the averments made as to
that day. To the extent Jones insinuates that those officials engaged in some
sort of interference during or after that event and Jones was unaware of this
interference at the time, he does not highlight when or how that information
became known. Similarly, as to the newly discovered facts exception, it is
unclear, specifically, what he is defining as those facts or when, too, he
became cognizant of those facts. In fact, through a thorough reading of his
brief, Jones mentions no dates beyond April 1999. These infirmities prove fatal
in his attempt to circumvent the PCRA’s time-bar.
As Jones’s petition is untimely and, further, because he failed to plead
and prove an exception to the PCRA’s time-bar, we do not have jurisdiction to
consider the merits of his underlying claims. Accordingly, we affirm the lower
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court’s order dismissing his PCRA petition.
Order affirmed.
Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 2/16/2023
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