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NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37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.
JERMONT COX
Appellant No. 1671 EDA 2015
Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered May 15, 2015
In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County
Criminal Division at No: CP-51-CR-0231601-1993
BEFORE: STABILE, DUBOW, JJ., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*
JUDGMENT ORDER BY STABILE, J.: FILED DECEMBER 23, 2016
Appellant, Jermont Cox, appeals from the May 15, 2015 order
dismissing his petition pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act (“PCRA”),
42 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-456. We affirm.
The facts and procedural history of this case and two related cases are
set forth at length in the PCRA court’s July 29, 2015 opinion. In summary,
this case involves the murder of Lawrence Davis, and it is one of three cases
in which Appellant was convicted of first-degree murder in the early 1990’s.
A trial court, sitting as fact finder, found Appellant guilty at the conclusion of
an October 29, 1993 bench trial and sentenced him to life in prison. This
Court affirmed the judgment of sentence and our Supreme Court denied
____________________________________________
*
Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court.
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allowance of appeal on April 30, 1996. Appellant filed the present PCRA
petition on June 28, 2013, approximately 17 years after the finality of his
judgment of sentence. The present petition is therefore facially untimely
under § 9545(b)(1) and the PCRA court dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction.
Appellant argues the PCRA court has jurisdiction under § 9545(b)(1)(ii),
which provides an exception to the PCRA’s time bar where the petition is
based on previously unknown facts that the petitioner could not have
discovered through due diligence. Appellant relies on a new ballistics report
he obtained after a federal district court, by order of February 7, 2012,
permitted discovery of the Commonwealth’s ballistics evidence.
Recently, in a related case involving the third victim, Terrance Stewart,
our Supreme Court held that Appellant did not act with due diligence by
waiting until 2010—the year he filed his federal habeas corpus petition—to
seek discovery of the Commonwealth’s ballistics evidence. Commonwealth
v. Cox, 146 A.3d 221, 230 (Pa. 2016). The Supreme Court wrote: “there is
no question that [Appellant] knew that more testing could be performed on
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the ballistics evidence at the time of trial in 1995.” Id. at 231. Given
Appellant’s lack of diligence, the Supreme Court ruled he cannot avail
himself of § 9545(b)(1)(ii). The Supreme Court’s analysis in Cox—based on
precisely the same ballistics evidence presently at issue—is controlling here.
We therefore affirm the PCRA court’s order.
Order affirmed.
Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 12/23/2016
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