Commonwealth v. CrewsCommonwealth v. Crews
- Reporters:
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- Before:
- Saylor
This is an appeal from the denial of a petition seeking relief under the Post Conviction Relief Act,
Appellant, Paul David Crews, was convicted of murdering Geoffrey Hood and Molly LaRue, two hikers he encountered on the Appalachian Trail in Perry County. In addition to the numerous other items of evidence linking Crews to the murders, the Commonwealth presented DNA evidence as part of its case. Following the penalty phase of his trial, Crews was sentenced to death. This Court affirmed the judgment of sentеnce in Commonwealth v. Crews, 536 Pa. 508, 640 A.2d 395 (1994), which set forth a more detailed recitation of the factual history.
On January 13, 1997, Crews filed a PCRA petition, which was subsequently amended on April 14, 1997. The Commonwealth filed аn answer to the amended petition and moved to dismiss the same. On July 22, 1997, the trial court dismissed Crews’ amended petition without a hearing.
In his request for collateral relief, Crews raises seven issues, several of which are framed in terms of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. To be eligible for relief under the PCRA, Crews must prove by a preрonderance of the evidence that his conviction or sentence was the product of one or more of the errors set forth in Section 9543(a)(2),
Crews’ first claim of error is that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel, because trial counsel failed to challenge the constitutionality of the death penalty generally and, in particular, Pennsylvania’s death penalty statute,
As the United States Supreme Court held in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the death penalty per se. Id. at 188, 96 S.Ct. at 2932; see also Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer, 500 Pa. 16, 77, 454 A.2d 937, 969 (1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 970, 103 S.Ct. 2444, 77 L.Ed.2d 1327 (1983) (holding that the death penalty does not violate the prohibition against cruel punishments set forth in Article 1, Section 13 of the Pennsylvania Constitution). Rather, the Eighth Amendment proscribes the infliction of the sentence of death under legal systems that permit the penalty to be “wantonly and freakishly” imposed. See Gregg, 428 U.S. at 188, 96 S.Ct. at 2932. Thus, the discretion that attends the decisions to seek and impose the death penalty must be suitably directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action. See id. at 189, 96 S.Ct. at 2932. In this regard, the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s statute has been upheld at both the federal and state levels, see Blystone v. Pennsylvania, 494 U.S. 299, 305, 110 S.Ct. 1078, 1082, 108 L.Ed.2d 255 (1990); Zettlemoyer, 500 Pa. at 77, 454 A.2d at 969, and Crews’ challenge to the death penalty generally is therefore without merit.
Turning to Crews’ contention that, under Pennsylvania’s death penalty statute the sentencing jury is accorded inappropriate discretion, this allegation is also unfounded. In
Commonwealth v. Hardcastle,
519 Pa. 236, 546 A.2d 1101 (1988), this Court found that the definitive standards set forth at
With respect to Crews’ allegation that the death penalty is disproportionately applied to the poor, he has offеred no evidence whatsoever in this regard. Even if Crews had demonstrated some degree of disproportionate impact, however, the Eighth Amendment is not offended by inconsistent results, provided that the discretion that accompanies the sentencing decision is properly channeled.
McCleskey v. Kem.p,
481 U.S. 279, 307 n. 28, 313, 107 S.Ct. 1756, 1775 n. 28, 1778, 95 L.Ed.2d 262 (1987).
1
As noted above, Pennsylvania’s deаth penalty statute appropriately limits the discretion involved in both seeking and imposing the death penalty, setting forth objective criteria in the form of aggravаting circumstances that are completely unrelated to the socioeconomic status of the defendant.
See
For these reasons, Crews’ Eighth Amendment claims are devoid of any merit. Therefore, counsel cannot be deemed ineffective for failing to pursue them.
The remainder of Crews’ claims havе been previously litigated. Crews’ second claim of error relates to the alleged failure of the trial court to conduct a Frye hearing, 2 an issue this Court addressed on direсt appeal. When addressing this issue previously, this Court noted that the trial court heard two days of testimony on DNA analysis before reaching its decision on the accеptability of DNA testing. See Crews, 536 Pa. at 519, 640 A.2d at 400. Next, Crews alleges a denial of due process because the Commonwealth’s DNA expert was permitted to testify respecting the match in DNA samples without reference to statistical analysis. Again, this issue was addressed on direct appeal, whereupon this Court held that such evidence was properly admitted at trial. See Crews, 536 Pa. at 523, 640 A.2d at 402.
Crews’ fourth and fifth claims of error involve, essentially, the same issue. He asserts that he was either entitled to a continuance during his trial to have the DNA samples tested by his own expert or, alternatively, that trial counsel was ineffective in failing to obtain the DNA samples sufficiently in advance of trial to have them tested. This Court previously addressed and rejected Crews’ contention regarding the refusal of a mid-trial continuance. See Crews, 536 Pa. at 524, 640 A.2d at 403. As to Crews’ ineffective assistance allegation, this claim is, еffectively, an attempt to relitigate the continuance issue under a different theory. See Christy, 540 Pa. at 202, 656 A.2d at 881. In any event, the underlying claim is without merit, as Crews’ own expert did evaluate the DNA samples, and the partial results from that evaluation corroborated the Commonwealth’s results. See Crews, 536 Pa. at 524-25, 640 A.2d at 405.
Crews also claims that counsel was ineffective in failing to objeсt when the Commonwealth’s chief investigator referred in his testimony to Crews’ post-arrest silence. This issue was reviewed on direct appeal, and this Court held that the refеrence in question did not relate to an interrogation for the crime, but rather, to questioning during the extradition process. See Crews, 536 Pa. at 529, 640 A.2d at 405. Accordingly, the error, if any, was deemed to bе harmless. See id.
Finally, Crews alleges that he was denied effective assistance of counsel in that the Commonwealth was permitted to place aggravating circumstances before the jury when the notice requirement of
Because we have concluded that the claims raised by Crews were previously litigated or are without merit, we affirm the order of the PCRA court.
Notes
. Notably, Crews has confined his argument on this issue to an Eighth Amendment challenge. He has not advanced an independent claim under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
. Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C.Cir.1923).