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NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
PENNSYLVANIA
Appellee
v.
GREGORY S. BURKE
Appellant No. 500 EDA 2016
Appeal from the PCRA Order January 14, 2016
In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County
Criminal Division at No(s): CP-51-CR-0325182-1986
BEFORE: PANELLA, J., RANSOM, J., and MUSMANNO, J.
MEMORANDUM BY PANELLA, J. FILED DECEMBER 27, 2016
Appellant, Gregory S. Burke, appeals, pro se, from the order
dismissing his fifth petition pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act
(“PCRA”) as untimely. We conclude that the PCRA court did not abuse its
discretion in concluding that Burke had failed to establish an exception to the
PCRA’s timeliness requirements. We therefore affirm.
We have previously set forth the factual and procedural history
pertinent to Burke’s convictions.
On August 13, 1980, at approximately 7:00 p.m., a gunpoint
robbery occurred at a grocery store located in Philadelphia. The
owner of the store was shot and killed. The homicide went
unsolved until late October of 1985, when the police were
informed that Appellant, along with Donald and Stanley Watson,
were the perpetrators in the incident.
On January 20, 1986, Appellant, during questioning, confessed
to the crimes. At trial he entered a negotiated guilty plea. The
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terms of the plea were that Appellant would give truthful
testimony in the prosecution against the third conspirator
Stanley Watson; the degree of murder would be graded second
degree; the court would impose the mandatory term of life
imprisonment for murder; and, the Commonwealth would
recommend concurrent terms for the remaining charges. By this
agreement, Appellant avoided conviction for murder of the first
degree thereby escaping a possible death sentence and
consecutive terms on the related offenses. After a complete
colloquy, the court accepted the plea.
On February 17, 1987, before imposition of sentence, Appellant
filed a petition to withdraw his plea alleging that it was
involuntary because he suffered mental problems resulting from
a head injury. The court denied the petition and imposed the
agreed upon sentence of life imprisonment for murder of the
second degree, concurrent terms of ten to twenty years for
robbery, and two and one-half to five years for possessing an
instrument of crime. Appellant then appealed to this Court in
1987, but subsequently withdrew that appeal. In July of 1989,
[A]ppellant filed a first pro se petition for relief under the Post
Conviction Relief Act. Thereafter, a nunc pro tunc appeal was
granted.
Upon appeal to this Court, we affirmed Appellant’s judgment of
sentence for second-degree murder and vacated Appellant’s
sentence for robbery after determining that the robbery
conviction merged with Appellant’s second-degree murder
conviction for sentencing purposes. We also remanded the
matter for resentencing on Appellant’s criminal conspiracy
conviction, noting that a suspended sentence was not sanctioned
under the sentencing scheme. [On January 11, 1994, the trial
court sentenced Appellant to a concurrent term of five to ten
years of imprisonment on the charge of criminal conspiracy.]
Appellant filed a petition for allowance of appeal to our Supreme
Court. On August 3, 1993, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court
denied the petition.
Appellant filed a second PCRA petition in May 1997. The PCRA
court dismissed the second petition as untimely in October 1997.
Appellant did not file an appeal from that dismissal.
Appellant filed a third PCRA petition on March 27, 2007, which
was dismissed on April 17, 2009. Appellant filed an appeal to this
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Court on May 4, 2009. We affirmed the order dismissing the
petition on March 10, 2010, holding that we lacked jurisdiction
because the third PCRA petition was untimely and Appellant
failed to plead and prove that a statutory exception applied.
[Appellant filed his fourth petition] on May 10, 2010. Appellant
also filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus on July 13, 2010,
the allegations of which the PCRA court … treated as part of the
PCRA petition. Upon the PCRA court’s December 20, 2010
issuance of its intent to dismiss the petition, Appellant filed an
objection on December 28, 2010, a motion for an evidentiary
hearing on March 22, 2011, and an amended PCRA petition on
August 22, 2012. The PCRA court dismissed the PCRA petition on
June 4, 2013.
Commonwealth v. Burke, 1979 EDA 2013, 1-4 (Pa. Super. 2014)
(unpublished memorandum) (citations and brackets omitted).
This Court affirmed the dismissal of Burke’s fourth PCRA petition. See
id., at 1. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania denied review on April 7,
2015. On October 30, 2015, Burke filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus
in the Civil Division of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County.
The matter was subsequently transferred to the criminal division, and Burke
filed another petition for writ of habeas corpus on December 4, 2015.
The PCRA court treated Burke’s petitions as a single PCRA petition,
and, on December 21, 2015, issued notice of its intent to dismiss the
petition as untimely. On January 14, 2016, the PCRA court dismissed the
petition, and this timely appeal followed.
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On appeal, Burke raises eight issues, but only two that even arguably
impact the PCRA court’s conclusion that the petition was untimely. 1 The
timeliness of a post-conviction petition is jurisdictional. See
Commonwealth v. Hernandez, 79 A.3d 649, 651 (Pa. Super. 2013).
Generally, a petition for relief under the PCRA, including a second or
subsequent petition, must be filed within one year of the date the judgment
is final, unless the petition alleges and proves an exception to the time for
filing the petition. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(1)(i)-(iii). A PCRA petition
invoking one of these statutory exceptions must “be filed within sixty days of
the date the claims could have been presented.” Hernandez, 79 A.3d at
651-652 (citing 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(2)).
Burke’s judgment of sentence became final on November 1, 1993,
when the ninety-day time period for filing an appeal to Supreme Court of the
United States expired. See 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 9545(b)(3); U.S.Sup.Ct.R. 13.
Therefore, Burke’s petition is patently untimely, and the PCRA court did not
have jurisdiction to entertain his petition unless he could establish the
applicability of an exception.
Both arguments put forth by Burke regarding the timeliness
requirement assert a single piece of newly discovered evidence. Specifically,
Burke contends that a Commonwealth witness committed perjury at trial
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1
Notably, Burke does not argue that the PCRA court erred in addressing his
petitions under the PCRA. See Appellant’s Brief, at 4.
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based upon an assertion that unspecified records indicate that the witness
was incarcerated at the time that he testified that he heard Burke’s
confession outside of prison. However, Burke raised these allegations in his
fourth PCRA petition, which was filed on May 10, 2010. See Burke, at 11-
13. Thus, he cannot establish that October 30, 2015, the date he filed the
instant petition, was within 60 days of the date that he learned of this
evidence. As a result, he cannot establish the applicability of the after-
discovered evidence timeliness exception. See Hernandez, 79 A.3d at 651-
52. Furthermore, this matter has been previously litigated. See Pa.C.S.A. §
9544(a)(3).
We cannot conclude that the PCRA court erred or abused its discretion
in dismissing the petition as untimely. We therefore affirm the order.
Order affirmed. Jurisdiction relinquished.
Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 12/27/2016
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Com. v. Burke, G.
Combined Opinion