Com. v. Cole, J.

CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedSeptember 2, 2022
Docket852 WDA 2021
StatusUnpublished

This text of Com. v. Cole, J. (Com. v. Cole, J.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Com. v. Cole, J., (Pa. Ct. App. 2022).

Opinion

J-A12045-22

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF : PENNSYLVANIA : v. : : : JAMES CHARLES COLE : : Appellant : No. 852 WDA 2021

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Entered June 22, 2021 In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County Criminal Division at No(s): CP-02-CR-0015767-2012

BEFORE: MURRAY, J., McCAFFERY, J., and COLINS, J.*

MEMORANDUM BY COLINS, J.: FILED: September 2, 2022

Appellant, James Charles Cole, appeals from the judgments of sentence

imposed following the second revocation of his probation in this case. He

challenges the discretionary aspects of his sentence that includes a term of

two and one-half to seven years of state confinement, to be followed by two

years of probation. Upon review, we affirm the judgments of sentence and

remand for the limited purpose of correcting an error on the sentencing order.

Initially in this matter, on March 18, 2013, Appellant pleaded guilty to

two counts of indecent assault of a person less than thirteen years of age, and

single counts of corruption of minors, unlawful conduct with a minor, and sale

____________________________________________

* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court. J-A12045-22

of a tobacco product to a minor.1 The facts underlying his plea involved his

illicit pursuit a twelve-year-old girl, and were summarized as follows:

Your Honor, if this case would have gone to trial, [A.Y.], a 12-year old child would have testified on November 15th 2012, the defendant approached her outside of her stepfather’s apartment building. She got into an argument with him and stepped out to cool off.

He approached her, told her she had a nice body for a 12-year old, gave her a cigarette, told her he would go back to jail for her, that she was jailbait, and offered her a carton of cigarettes if she would have sex with him.

He then grabbed her by the arm and tried to pull her into the house. She broke away and went to the apartment.

The following day, around 5:00 in the afternoon, she was walking away from her apartment to meet her mother at the Walmart. There is apparently a trail that goes behind her apartment. He came running up from behind her, bit her on the left side of her neck, and tried to kiss her. She told him to get off of her and started to walk and run away.

He followed her, grabbed her butt, grabbed her breasts, and stuck his hand down her pants, and grabbed her rear end from behind, inside of her clothes.

He continued to follow her to Route 30, at the pawn shop, where he tried to kiss her again. She was able to push him away and ran toward her mother, and the police were called.

N.T. Guilty Plea Hearing, 3/18/13, 7-8.2 ____________________________________________

1 18 Pa.C.S. §§ 3126(a)(7), 6301(a)(1)(ii), 6318(a)(1), and 6305(a)(1), respectively.

2Factoring in Appellant’s date of birth listed on his county court summary would permit the calculation that Appellant was twenty-three years old at the (Footnote Continued Next Page)

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Appellant entered his plea without an agreement on a sentencing

recommendation. N.T. Guilty Plea Hearing, 3/18/13, 2. After bifurcation in

order to request a presentence investigation report, the plea court sentenced

him to an aggregate term of six to twelve months of imprisonment and ten

years of probation. N.T. Sentencing Hearing, 10/3/13, 34-35; Sentencing

Order, 10/3/13, 1-2. The aggregate sentence included the county

imprisonment term and five years of probation on his first indecent assault

count, a consecutive five-year probation term for his second indecent assault

count, and concurrent five-year probation terms for corruption of minors and

unlawful contact with a minor (to be served concurrent with the probation for

the first count of indecent assault).3 N.T. Sentencing Hearing, 10/3/13, 34-

35; Sentencing Order, 10/3/13, 1-2. The first year of his probation was

time of his underlying offenses. N.T. Guilty Plea Hearing, 3/18/13, 2 (Appellant identifying his age as “23” at the time of the plea hearing).

3 We note that the Sentencing Guidelines recommended the following minimum imprisonment terms at Appellant’s original sentencing hearing: six to fourteen months of imprisonment, plus or minus six months for aggravating or mitigating circumstances, for the two indecent assault counts and unlawful contact, and one to twelve months of imprisonment, plus or minus three months for aggravating or mitigating circumstances, for corruption of minors. 204 Pa. Code § 303.15 (offense listing; 6th ed. rev.) (providing offense gravity scores for the offenses); 204 Pa. Code § 303.16 (basic sentencing matrix; 6th ed. rev.); see also Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing Guideline Sentence Forms 1-4, undated (indicating that Appellant had a prior record score of 1 and setting forth the applicable guideline ranges).

We also note that Appellant was initially subject to lifetime registration requirements as a sex offender. N.T. Sentencing Hearing, 10/3/13, 7-15. Based on subsequent legislation, Appellant was later reclassified as a ten-year registrant. Order, 4/19/18, 1.

-3- J-A12045-22

designated to be served in a restrictive intermediate punishment program.

Id.

After being paroled on October 28, 2013, Appellant had a compliance

hearing after, inter alia, he violated a condition of his supervision to not wear

clothing that falsely projected that he was an emergency responder,

absconded from house arrest, accessed the internet, tested positive for two

non-prescribed narcotics, and had disruptive conduct, including his acts of

throwing a cellular phone in a toilet, using inappropriate names and racial

slurs, and “roughhousing” with a fellow resident at his parole placement. N.T.

3/18/13 Sentencing Hearing, 21-23, 29-30; N.T. Compliance Hearing,

12/16/13, 3-4, 14-17, 20-23, 26, 30-33. The court detained him after hearing

of those developments. Id. at 39. After the court was informed that there

were no county housing options available for Appellant, N.T. Status Hearing,

2/24/14, 6-7, the court found him in technical violation of his supervision and

revoked his probation. N.T. First Revocation Hearing, 3/24/14, 18-19. The

court resentenced him to an aggregate term of twenty-four to seventy-two

months of imprisonment to be followed by eleven years of probation. Id. at

19-20; Sentencing Order, 3/24/14, 1-2. The aggregate term consisted of

twelve to thirty-six months of imprisonment and two years of probation for

his first count of indecent assault, consecutive imprisonment and probation

terms of twelve to thirty-six months and four years for his second indecent

assault count, another consecutive five-year probation term for corruption of

-4- J-A12045-22

minors, and a concurrent five-year term of probation for unlawful contact with

a minor.

Appellant appealed, challenging the discretionary aspects of his new

sentence. Commonwealth v. Cole, 2015 WL 7302858, *1 (Pa. Super., filed

Apr. 10, 2015) (unpublished memorandum). This Court found that he waived

his lone claim by not including a statement in his brief pursuant to Pa.R.A.P.

2119(f), and affirmed the judgments of sentence. Id. at *2; Commonwealth

v. Cole, 121 A.3d 1127 (Pa. Super. 2015) (table). Following the filing of a

petition for relief pursuant to Post Conviction Relief Act, 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-

46, the lower court reinstated Appellant’s direct appeal rights nunc pro tunc.

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Com. v. Cole, J., Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/com-v-cole-j-pasuperct-2022.