Commonwealth v. Hagan

306 A.3d 414

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania

v.Donald A. HAGAN, Appellant

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

v.Donald A. Hagan, Appellant

No. 872 WDA 2022

No. 928 WDA 2022

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Submitted June 20, 2023

Filed December 6, 2023

West Codenotes

Recognized as Invalid

18 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 4915

Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered June 30, 2022, In the Court of Common Pleas of Venango County, Criminal Division, at No(s): CP-61-CR-0000242-2015, CP-61-CR-0000116-2009, Stephen B. Lieberman, J.

Jeri L. Bolton, Franklin, for appellant.

D. Shawn White, District Attorney, Franklin, for Commonwealth, appellee.

BEFORE: OLSON, J., STABILE, J., and MURRAY, J.

OPINION BY OLSON, J.:

In this consolidated appeal,¹ Appellant, Donald A. Hagan, appeals from the June 30, 2022 order entered in the Court of Common Pleas of Venango County that dismissed a filing originally styled as a petition for writ of habeas corpus. The PCRA court treated Appellant’s submission as a petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act ("PCRA"), 42 Pa. C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546.² Following argument, the PCRA court dismissed Appellant’s filing. We affirm.

The record demonstrates that, on November 13, 1992, Appellant was convicted of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse ("IDSI").³ Appellant was sentenced to 7 to 14 years’ incarceration for his conviction. Trial Court Opinion, 7/1/16, at 3. Appellant was not subject to registration requirements at the time of his conviction and sentencing but, with the subsequent passage of Megan’s Law I in 1996, he became subject to registration with the Pennsylvania State Police as a sexual offender.⁴ See 42 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9791-9799.9 (effective, generally, Apr. 22, 1996, to Jul. 9, 2000).

While Appellant remained incarcerated for his 1992 IDSI conviction, Pennsylvania’s sexual offender registration laws continued to evolve. In Commonwealth v. Williams, 557 Pa. 285, 733 A.2d 593 (1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1077, 120 S.Ct. 792, 145 L.Ed.2d 668 (2000) ("Williams I"), our Supreme Court invalidated the SVP provisions of Megan’s Law I after determining that those procedures violated procedural due process. Williams, 733 A.2d at 608. This determination arose from our Supreme Court’s conclusion that a finding of SVP status under Megan’s Law I entailed a separate factual determination that ultimately increased a sexual offender’s maximum term of confinement above the statutory maximum for the underlying offense. Id. at 603. After Williams I was decided, the General Assembly passed Megan’s Law II, which was signed into law on May 10, 2000, and became effective July 9, 2000.⁵ See Act of May 10, 2000, P.L. 74, No. 18. Thereafter, the General Assembly enacted additional changes to Megan’s Law II with the passage of the Act of November 24, 2004, P.L. 1243, No. 152 ("Act 152"), commonly referred to as Megan’s Law III, which was signed into law on November 24, 2004, and became effective January 24, 2005.⁶ See Commonwealth v. Neiman, 624 Pa. 53, 84 A.3d 603, 607 (2013). Relevant to this appeal, as developed in greater detail infra, one of the legislative enactments ushered in by Megan’s Law III involved an addition to the Crimes Code codified at Section 4915(a)(1), which made it a criminal offense when a sexual offender, subject to registration, failed to register his or her residential address with the Pennsylvania State Police. See 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 4915(a)(1) (effective Jan. 1, 2007, to Feb. 20, 2012) (stating, in pertinent part, that, "an individual who is subject to registration under 42 Pa.C.S.[A.] § 9795.1(b) or who was subject to registration under former 42 Pa. C.S[A.] § 9793 (relating to registration of certain offenders for ten years) commits an offense if he[, or she,] knowingly fails to[ ] register with the Pennsylvania State Police" (format modified)).

As a result of unrelated events in January 2009, police discovered that Appellant, as a sexual offender subject to lifetime registration, failed to register his then-current residential address.⁷ Accordingly, the Commonwealth charged Appellant, at trial court docket CP-61-CR-0000116-2009 ("CR-116-2009"), with failure to comply with registration of sexual offender requirements, 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 4915(a)(1). On June 19, 2009, a jury convicted Appellant of violating Section 4915(a)(1). The trial court subsequently sentenced Appellant on July 28, 2009, to 40 to 120 months’ incarceration for his conviction under Section 4915(a)(1).⁸

This Court affirmed Appellant’s judgment of sentence at CR-116-2009 on October 21, 2010, and Appellant did not seek discretionary review with our Supreme Court. Commonwealth v. Hagan, 15 A.3d 537, 2010 WL 5697370 (Pa. Super. filed Oct. 21, 2010) (unpublished memorandum). As such, Appellant’s judgment of sentence at CR-116-2009 became final on Monday, November 22, 2010. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(3) (stating, "[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 the time for seeking the review"); see also Pa.R.A.P. 1113(a) (requiring a petition for allowance of appeal to be filed within 30 days after entry of an order of this Court sought to be reviewed); 1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1908 (stating that, whenever the last day of any period of time referred to in a statute "shall fall on Saturday or Sunday, or on any day made a legal holiday by the laws of this Commonwealth or of the United States, such day shall be omitted from the computation").

On April 1, 2015, Appellant, while incarcerated for his 2009 conviction for failure to register, was charged at trial court docket CP-61-CR-0000242-2015 ("CR-242-2015") with rape – forcible compulsion, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse – threat of forcible compulsion, and sexual assault.⁹ On October 19, 2015, Appellant pled guilty, pursuant to a negotiated plea agreement, to one count each of indecent assault – forcible compulsion and indecent assault – threat of forcible compulsion.¹⁰ On July 22, 2016, the trial court sentenced Appellant to 16 to 60 months’ incarceration on each of the two aforementioned convictions. The periods of incarceration were set to run concurrently to each other, and set to run consecutively to all sentences previously imposed on Appellant. On August 4, 2016, the trial court, having designated Appellant an SVP at CR-242-2015,¹¹ notified Appellant that, as a result of his convictions, he was subject to lifetime registration with the Pennsylvania State Police pursuant Section 9799.15(a)(6) of SORNA.¹² See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9799.15(a)(6) (effective Dec. 20, 2012, to Feb. 20, 2018). Appellant did not pursue a direct appeal of his July 22, 2016 judgment of sentence with this Court. Therefore, Appellant’s judgment of sentence at CR-242-2015 became final on Monday, August 22, 2016. See Pa.R.A.P. 903(a) (explaining that, an appellant has "30 days after the entry of the order from which the appeal is taken" in which to file a notice of appeal); see also 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(3); 1 Pa.C.S.A. § 1908.

After the trial court imposed its sentence at CR-116-2009 on July 28, 2009, but before Appellant’s sentence was imposed at CR-242-2015 on July 22, 2016, our Supreme Court, in Neiman, supra, invalidated Megan’s Law III, including Section 4915(a)(1) (the provision of the Crimes Code used to prosecute Appellant’s failure to comply with registration requirements at CR-116-2009), because passage of Act 152 violated the single subject rule of the Pennsylvania Constitution.¹³ Neiman, 84 A.3d at 605, 613, 615-616. Thereafter, in 2017, our Supreme Court, in Commonwealth v. Derhammer, 643 Pa. 391, 173 A.3d 723 (2017), clarified the implications of Neiman and held that the Commonwealth lacked authority to prosecute a defendant for violating Section 4915 after Neiman invalidated Megan’s Law III. Derhammer, 173 A.3d at 728-731. In 2020, our Supreme Court, in Commonwealth v. McIntyre, 659 Pa. 428,232 A.3d 609 (2020), agreed that McIntyre (a petitioner for collateral relief) was entitled to the relief he requested where he asserted, in a timely PCRA petition,¹⁴ that his conviction and sentence under Section 4915 were unlawful since Section 4915 was invalid from its inception. McIntyre, 232 A.3d at 617 n.13, 619.

On December 20, 2021, Appellant filed pro se at CR-116-2009 and CR-242-2015 a petition for writ of habeas corpus.¹⁵ Counsel was appointed to represent Appellant on January 7, 2022, and subsequently filed an amended petition for writ of habeas corpus on May 6, 2022. The amended petition alleged that Appellant was entitled to relief under Neiman, Derhammer, and McIntyre. The PCRA court entertained argument on Appellant’s petition for writ of habeas corpus on June 30, 2022, and, thereupon, concluded that Appellant’s December 2021 submission should be treated as a petition for collateral relief under the PCRA. That same day, the PCRA court denied Appellant’s December 2021 filing.¹⁶ PCRA Court Order, 6/30/22 This appeal followed.¹⁷

Appellant raises the following issues for our review:

[1.] Whether [Appellant’s petition for] writ of habeas corpus[ ] is an allowable procedural mechanism[ ] to challenge[ ] the sexual offender registration statute[?]

[2.] Whether [Appellant’s] conviction[] in 2009 for failure to register violate[s] the ex post facto laws of the United States and Pennsylvania constitutions and this being the case, the Commonwealth cannot hold [Appellant] criminally liable for violating Section [ ] 4915(a)(1) of the Crimes Code[?]

Appellant’s Brief at 4 (extraneous capitalization omitted).¹⁸

Appellant’s first issue challenges the PCRA court’s treatment of his petition for writ of habeas corpus as a PCRA petition. Id. at 8-14.¹⁹ Appellant asserts that, pursuant to our Supreme Court’s decision in Commonwealth v. Lacombe, 660 Pa. 568, 234 A.3d 602 (2020), he "may challenge the application of a sexual offender registration statute outside the framework of the...