Com. v. Daniels, E., 2525 EDA 2017

In June 2009 three men entered an apartment building to rob drug couriers; two victims (Rian Thal and Timothy Gilmore) were killed. Surveillance, cell records, and witness statements linked Daniels to the scene.
Daniels was convicted in December 2011 of two counts of second-degree murder, robbery (merged for sentencing), conspiracy, and a weapons offense; he received consecutive life sentences for the murders.
Daniels’ first PCRA petition (filed 2014) was dismissed; this appeal affirmed in 2016 and allowance of appeal was denied by the Supreme Court in 2017.
Daniels filed a second pro se PCRA petition on June 2, 2017, claiming newly discovered facts: Detective Ronald Dove’s April 26, 2017 guilty plea and newspaper reports alleging misconduct by Detectives James Pitts and Ohmarr Jenkins.
The PCRA court dismissed the second petition as untimely under the one-year PCRA time bar, finding Daniels had not exercised due diligence for the Jenkins/Pitts material but that Dove’s guilty plea (filed April 26, 2017) could be treated as newly discovered; however, the court held the after-discovered-evidence claim as to Dove lacked merit because Dove provided no incriminating trial testimony against Daniels and the evidence would be only impeaching or immaterial to the verdict.
This Court affirmed: Daniels satisfied the newly-discovered-fact exception only as to Dove’s guilty plea but failed to show the after-discovered evidence would likely produce a different verdict.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (Daniels)	Defendant's Argument (Commonwealth/PCRA Ct)	Held
Whether Daniels pleaded an exception to the PCRA timeliness bar (newly discovered facts)	Dove’s April 26, 2017 guilty plea and articles about Pitts/Jenkins are newly discovered; Burton means public-record presumptions don’t apply to pro se prisoners	Information about Dove’s misconduct was publicly available earlier (2013); articles about Pitts/Jenkins dated 2013 and 2016—Daniels failed to show due diligence in discovering them	Court: Only Dove’s guilty plea met the §9545(b)(1)(ii) exception (filed within 60 days); Jenkins/Pitts materials were untimely and lacked due diligence
Whether Daniels’ after-discovered-evidence claim entitles him to relief	Dove’s guilty plea undermines the reliability of the investigation and is not merely impeachment; thus it could likely produce a different verdict	Dove did not participate in the core investigative testimony against Daniels—he only analyzed phone records and could not verify a number; the new fact is at best impeachment and would not likely change the outcome given the other evidence	Court: After-discovered-evidence claim fails. Dove’s plea would not likely compel a different verdict; relief denied

Commonwealth v. Burton, 158 A.3d 618 (Pa. 2017) (public-record knowledge presumption does not automatically apply to pro se prisoner petitioners)
Commonwealth v. Cox, 146 A.3d 221 (Pa. 2016) (due diligence standard for newly discovered facts does not require perfection but reasonable effort)
Commonwealth v. Brown, 111 A.3d 171 (Pa. Super. 2015) (timeliness of PCRA petition is jurisdictional)
Commonwealth v. Washington, 927 A.2d 586 (Pa. 2007) (elements for relief on after-discovered evidence: discovered after trial, not obtainable earlier with due diligence, not cumulative, not solely impeachment, likely to produce different verdict)
Commonwealth v. Lark, 746 A.2d 585 (Pa. 2000) (court may deny remand while allowing later PCRA filing based on evidence discovered during appeal)
Commonwealth v. Lawson, 90 A.3d 1 (Pa. Super. 2014) (standard of review for PCRA dismissal)