Opinion
J-S03025-17 No. 933 WDA 2016
04-07-2017
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA Appellee v. DEAN SASANKO Appellant
NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
Appeal from the PCRA Order dated June 3, 2016
In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-02-CR-0000654-1984 BEFORE: OLSON, J., SOLANO, J., and STRASSBURGER, J. JUDGMENT ORDER BY SOLANO, J.:
Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.
Appellant, Dean Sasanko, appeals pro se from the order dismissing as untimely his fourth petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act. 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-46. We affirm.
On June 27, 1984, a jury convicted Appellant of two counts of first-degree murder for the January 9, 1984 shooting deaths of Appellant's adoptive father and grandmother. Appellant, who was born on September 14, 1965, was 18 years old at the time of the murders. On February 27, 1985, the trial court sentenced Appellant to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment. Appellant filed a post-sentence motion, which was denied on March 21, 1985. He then filed a direct appeal. We affirmed Appellant's judgment of sentence on January 17, 1986. Commonwealth v. Sasanko , 508 A.2d 343 (Pa. Super. 1986) (unpublished memorandum). Appellant filed a petition for allowance of appeal, which our Supreme Court denied on October 7, 1986.
Thereafter, Appellant filed a succession of pleadings in which he unsuccessfully sought post-conviction relief. Most recently, on March 16, 2016, Appellant filed the pro se PCRA petition presently before us. The PCRA court issued notice of its intention to dismiss the petition pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907 on April 26, 2016, and dismissed the petition on June 3, 2016. This timely appeal followed.
Although Appellant has failed to structure his brief as directed by Rules of Appellate Procedure 2111 and 2114-2119, we distill the essence of his appellate issue to be that the PCRA court erred in concluding that he was not a juvenile when he committed first-degree murder, and is therefore entitled to relief under Miller v. Alabama , 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012), and Montgomery v. Louisiana , 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016). See generally , Appellant's Brief at 1-4.
Miller v. Alabama held unconstitutional sentences of mandatory life imprisonment without parole imposed upon juveniles who were under the age of 18 at the time they committed murder; Montgomery v. Louisiana held that the application of Miller v. Alabama is retroactive. Id. --------
We already have held on one of Appellant's earlier PCRA petitions that because Appellant was 18 years old when he committed the murders, he is not eligible for relief under Miller v. Alabama and he fails to meet the exception to the PCRA's timeliness requirement for assertion of a newly-recognized constitutional right that has been held to apply retroactively (42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(iii)). See , e.g., Commonwealth v. Sasanko , 97 A.3d 794 (Pa. Super. 2014) (unpublished memorandum at 5) (holding that Appellant was ineligible for relief under Miller because he was not a juvenile when he committed the murders). Undeterred by this Court's 2014 decision, Appellant reiterates his argument under Miller and couples it with a citation to Montgomery v. Louisiana , along with an argument that "Pennsylvania thinks and by the Constitutional Law that you are not an adult until you reach the age of 21." Appellant's Brief at 2. Thus, Appellant seeks to be designated as a juvenile for purposes of the holdings in Miller and Montgomery. There is no merit to Appellant's argument.
As a matter of federal constitutional law, Miller and Montgomery do not apply to individuals who were 18 or older at the time they committed murder. See Commonwealth v. Furgess , 149 A.3d 90 (Pa. Super. 2016) (holding that Miller did not apply to a 19-year-old appellant convicted of homicide, even though that appellant claimed he was a "technical juvenile" and relied on neuroscientific theories regarding immature brain development to support his claim). Even if Pennsylvania deemed the age defining a juvenile to be something other than 18, the Supreme Court's decision in Miller still makes 18 the controlling age for application of the Miller decision. Accordingly, as we held in 2014, Appellant may not succeed on a claim under Miller.
For these reasons, we affirm the order denying Appellant's PCRA petition.
Order affirmed. Judgment Entered. /s/_________
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary Date: 4/7/2017