Com. v. Duboise R.

CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedJuly 13, 2023
Docket2242 EDA 2022
StatusUnpublished

This text of Com. v. Duboise R. (Com. v. Duboise R.) 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. Duboise R., (Pa. Ct. App. 2023).

Opinion

J-S18032-23

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF : PENNSYLVANIA : v. : : : RYAN L. DUBOISE : : Appellant : No. 2242 EDA 2022

Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered August 11, 2022 In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Criminal Division at No(s): CP-51-CR-0011415-2014

BEFORE: PANELLA, P.J., DUBOW, J., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*

MEMORANDUM BY STEVENS, P.J.E.: FILED JULY 13, 2023

Ryan L. Duboise appeals pro se from the August 11, 2022 order

dismissing his petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief Act

(“PCRA”), 42 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 9541-9546. After careful review, we affirm.

The relevant facts of this case were set forth by a prior panel of this

Court as follows:

From the time [the victim,] Monet Hall[,] and [Appellant] began dating, until the moment [Appellant] murdered her, the two had a violent and abusive relationship. In January 2014, Hall and [Appellant] moved into an apartment on Allegheny Avenue in Philadelphia. Not long after, on February 5, 2014, Hall sought treatment at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital for rib injuries. On February 22, 2014, Hall’s cousin, Angela Starks, called 911 after a crying Hall called her and told her that [Appellant] would not stop ____________________________________________

* Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court. J-S18032-23

punching her in the stomach. On March 4, 2014, Hall was treated at Temple University Hospital for a closed head injury, contusions, and a facial laceration, after being hit in the head with a bottle.

On the morning of April 2, 2014, two days before Hall was found dead, Police Officer Christopher Reeder and his partner responded to a 911 call for a person with a weapon on Allegheny Avenue. The police encountered Hall[,] who appeared under the influence[,] and requested transportation to a hospital. She informed police that she had had an altercation with her boyfriend and that her head hurt. That same day, Hall told Temple University Hospital staff that her boyfriend physically assaulted, punched, and kicked her. She was offered social service help but declined.

On the morning of April 4, 2014, after [Appellant] returned to his apartment from spending the night at his best friend Dustin Taylor’s house, he called 911 and reported that he had found Hall unresponsive. When medics arrived at or around 7:30 a.m., they found Hall dead, lying naked on a bed. [Appellant] claimed that he did not know what had happened to her. After the medics informed [Appellant] that Hall was dead, [Appellant] swiftly left the apartment. Outside, he encountered Firefighter Captain Crespo. According to the captain, [Appellant] appeared nervous and uncomfortable and refused to give his name or relation to the deceased. [Appellant] then walked to the corner and disappeared.

In the bedroom where Hall was found dead, Officer Guaraldo recovered a broken flat iron inside a wastebasket near the bed. The flat iron was broken into three pieces: a large piece connected to a cord, a paddle-like shaped piece, and a small plastic piece. Both Detective Crone and Officer Guaraldo observed a unique pattern of marks on Hall’s buttock and left hip consistent with the flat iron’s shape. After noticing injuries around Hall's neck, they also found an audio- visual (“AV”) cord on the television stand at the foot of the bed. DNA mixtures found on both the flat iron

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and the AV cord were consistent with that of Hall and [Appellant].

Dr. Gary Collins, former Deputy Chief Medical Examiner of Philadelphia, testified that Hall had numerous bruis[es], abrasions, and scrapes about her face, forearms, hips, legs, and buttocks. The cause of death was homicidal violence, including blunt impact injuries and strangulation. The victim’s bodily injuries were severe enough to cause a large amount of fat emboli to enter the blood vessels of her lungs, preventing proper oxygenation of her blood, which may have contributed to her death.

After [Appellant] returned to the scene, Captain Crespo pointed him out to police. When questioned by police, [Appellant] said that Hall had died from a drug overdose and that someone had beaten her. The officers decided to bring him to the homicide unit for further questioning. When placing [Appellant] in handcuffs, the officers noticed that his hands were swollen with several marks on his right hand. Officer Van Sciver observed that [Appellant’s] hands were so swollen that they were almost double their normal size.

On April 4 and on May 20, 2014, Dustin Taylor gave statements to Philadelphia Police detectives. He told detectives that [Appellant] came to his apartment on the night of April 3, 2014 (the night before Hall was found dead), and that his hands were swollen — his right hand was so puffy, it resembled “genetically modified chickens.” Taylor said he joked about [Appellant’s] swollen hands, but [Appellant] did not respond, something Taylor found strange.

Taylor also informed detectives that [Appellant] and Hall had domestic problems and that [Appellant] had complained to Taylor several times about Hall stealing drugs (crack and heroin) from him. [Appellant] also told Taylor that he would kick and punch Hall’s ankles and legs and verbally abuse her, calling her a b[**]ch, whore, and crack whore. Taylor said that two days before [Appellant] slept at his house, [Appellant] and

-3- J-S18032-23

Hall had a domestic incident after Hall stole $20.00 from [Appellant] and used it to get high.

Recovered video footage from surveillance cameras located diagonally across and down the street from [Appellant] and Hall’s apartment showed an individual leaving at or about 8:20 p.m. on April 3, 2014, and returning to the apartment the next morning at or about 7:27 a.m. No one was seen on the video entering or exiting the property after the individual left. When [a] detective brought [Appellant] into the Homicide Unit on April 4, his clothing was consistent with the clothing worn by the individual in the video — a black, white, and grey checkered shirt with a hoodie.

Francis Curry, [Appellant’s] cell mate while incarcerated in April or May 2014 at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Delaware County, testified that after [Appellant] was arrested for Hall’s murder, he told Curry that right before Hall died, he and Hall argued over a phone call from another male and that Hall had stolen money for pills (Xanax). [Appellant] told Curry that he hit Hall a couple times and gave her more pills. He claimed that after Hall ingested the pills, she made gargling sounds and asked for [Appellant] to call 911, but he refused. [Appellant] claimed that he left Hall in the apartment; when he returned, she was dead.

Commonwealth v. Duboise, 185 A.3d 1087 (Pa.Super. 2018) (unpublished

memorandum at *1-2), appeal denied, 196 A.3d 617 (Pa. 2018), quoting

trial court opinion, 9/8/16, at 2–5.

The PCRA court summarized the procedural history of this case as

follows:

On August 5, 2014, [Appellant] was arrested and charged with murder and possession of an instrument of crime (“PIC”). On April 4, 2016, after being

-4- J-S18032-23

permitted to proceed pro se, [Appellant] appeared before this Court and elected to be tried by a jury. On April 12, 2016, the jury convicted [Appellant] of third- degree murder and PIC.[1]

On June 27, 2016, th[e trial c]ourt sentenced [Appellant] to twenty to forty years imprisonment for third-degree murder and a consecutive sentence of two-and-a-half to five years for PIC, for a total sentence of twenty-two-and-a-half to forty-five years imprisonment.

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Com. v. Duboise R., Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/com-v-duboise-r-pasuperct-2023.