Opinion
No. 472 WAL 2019
06-10-2020
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, Respondent v. JAMIE M. BROWN, Petitioner
Petition for Allowance of Appeal from the Unpublished Memorandum and Order of the Superior Court at No. 1468 WDA 2018 (Olson, Ott , Colins, JJ.), entered on October 2, 2019, affirming the PCRA Order of the Beaver County Court of Common Pleas at No. CP-04-CR-0000913-2001 (McBride, S.J.), entered on September 21, 2018 CONCURRING AND DISSENTING STATEMENT JUSTICE WECHT
Although I agree that three of the four issues that Petitioner raises do not merit our review, I would grant allocatur as to his remaining question. In that issue, Petitioner asks:
Whether, in a matter of first impression, the panel erred in finding that the PCRA court did not have jurisdiction to consider Brown's timeliness claims raised within sixty days of discovery following a remand for a hearing on a separate timeliness claim, which is inconsistent with the plain language of 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(2), Commonwealth v. Lark, 746 A.2d 585 (Pa. 2000), Commonwealth v. Porter, 35 A.3d 4 (Pa. 2012), and conflicts with Commonwealth v. Montgomery, 181 A.3d 359 (Pa. Super. 2018) (en banc)?Petition for Allowance of Appeal ("PAA"), 472 WAL 2019, at 7 (footnote omitted).
Post Conviction Relief Act. 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-46. --------
In Commonwealth v. Sepulveda, 144 A.3d 1270 (Pa. 2016), this Court stated "that a PCRA court does not have discretion to treat new claims raised by a PCRA petitioner as an amended PCRA petition following remand from this Court unless such amendment is expressly authorized in the remand order." Id. at 1280 (emphasis added); see also Commonwealth v. Rivera, 199 A.3d 365, 388-89 (Pa. 2018) (applying Sepulveda and holding that a PCRA petitioner could not amend his petition upon remand). Petitioner asserts that, "[t]o the extent Sepulveda and Rivera preclude amendments after a remand, they did not hold that timeliness based claims and their related derivative merits based issues cannot be considered as a separate petition and consolidated with the remanded claim." PAA at 23-24 (emphasis added).
Petitioner has identified a gap in our PCRA jurisprudence: this Court has not yet answered the question of whether a PCRA court can consider a new PCRA petition while another petition is on remand. This issue is an appropriate one for allocatur review, as it offers this Court an opportunity to provide guidance for PCRA courts confronting similar circumstances.