Com. v. Martinez-Garcia, M.

• Court: Superior Court of Pennsylvania
• Decided: August 11, 2025
• Docket: 2586 EDA 2024
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

J-S25021-25

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF : PENNSYLVANIA : v. : : : MARCO ANTONIO MARTINEZ-GARCIA : : Appellant : No. 2586 EDA 2024

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Entered July 29, 2024 In the Court of Common Pleas of Chester County Criminal Division at No(s): CP-15-CR-0000822-2021

BEFORE: PANELLA, P.J.E., DUBOW, J., and BENDER, P.J.E.

MEMORANDUM BY DUBOW, J.: FILED AUGUST 11, 2025

Appellant Marco Antonio Martinez-Garcia appeals from the Judgment of

Sentence entered by the Chester County Court of Common Pleas after the trial

court found him guilty of three counts of Rape of a Child, three counts of

Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse (“IDSI”), and related offenses.

Appellant’s counsel, Maria Heller, Esq., has filed an Anders/Santiago1 brief

and a motion to withdraw as counsel. After careful review, we affirm the

Judgment of Sentence and grant counsel’s motion to withdraw.

We glean the relevant factual and procedural history from the certified

record. In 2020, A.L., Appellant’s then eleven-year-old son, told his mother

that beginning when he was four years old, Appellant had repeatedly raped

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1 Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 783 (1981); Commonwealth v. Santiago,

978 A.2d 349 (Pa. 2009). J-S25021-25

him anally and orally at both their home in Chester County and at A.L.’s

grandmother’s house in York County. Following an investigation, the

Commonwealth charged Appellant in Chester County with multiple counts of

sexually abusing A.L. over a six-year period. The charges encompassed

crimes committed in both counties

On September 11, 2023, just before the bench trial started, Appellant’s

counsel filed a “motion to remove” the offenses alleged to have occurred in

York County “because of improper venue.” N.T., 9/11/24, at 3. In support,

counsel argued that because the offenses occurred over a number of years,

“[t]hey are not temporally related” and were “not a part of the same criminal

episode.” Id. at 3-4. Following argument, the court denied the motion.

Trial commenced with testimony from, inter alia, A.L.’s mother, A.L.,

A.L.’s brother, and a Pennsylvania State Police investigator. A.L.’s mother

testified regarding, inter alia, her relationship with Appellant and her children,

and about how difficult it was for A.L. to finally tell her about the abuse.

A.L. testified regarding the various locations where the abuse occurred,

providing graphic details of some of the rapes and the other sexual offenses,

and emphasizing that Appellant’s abuse occurred several times weekly since

he was four years old, sometimes in the shower while his three siblings dried

off outside the shower. He stated that when he was 9 years old, he, his

mother, and his siblings moved to Brooklyn, New York, and he and his siblings

then had weekend visits with Appellant in York County where the abuse

continued. He also testified that from the time the abuse began, Appellant

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made him promise not to tell anyone about it, which was why it was so difficult

to tell his mother about it over the years.

A.L.’s brother corroborated portions of A.L.’s testimony. A child forensic

interviewer testified regarding her interview with A.L. following his report of

the abuse, and the Commonwealth played the recorded interview for the

court.

On September 12, 2023, the court found Appellant guilty of three counts

of Rape, three counts of IDSI, and one count each of Indecent Assault,

Endangering the Welfare of a Child, and Corruption of Minors.2 The court

deferred sentencing and ordered a pre-sentence investigation report and an

evaluation from the Sexual Offenders Assessment Board (“SOAB”) to

determine whether he met the criteria of a sexually violent predator (“SVP”).

On July 29, 2024, the court sentenced Appellant to an aggregate of

thirty-one to sixty-two years’ incarceration 3 and Appellant did not challenge

the SOAB’s report that he was a SVP.

2 18 Pa.C.S. §§ 3121(c), 3123(b), 3126(a)(7), 4304(a)(1), and 6301(a)(1)(ii).

3 The court sentenced Appellant as follows: (1) ten to twenty years’ incarceration on each of the three Rape convictions, with the first two sentences to run consecutively and the third sentence to run concurrently with the second Rape sentence; (2) three terms of ten to twenty years for the IDSI convictions, with one IDSI sentence to run consecutively to the second Rape sentence and the other two IDSI sentences to run concurrently with the first IDSI sentence; (3) and 1 to 2 years for the EWOC conviction to run consecutive to the IDSI sentences. The convictions for Indecent Assault and Corruption of Minors merged with the Rape convictions for purposes of sentencing.

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Appellant timely filed a motion to modify or reduce his sentence but at

the August 26, 2024 hearing on the motion, counsel informed the court that

after further discussion with Appellant, Appellant wished only to have the court

affirm his sentence.

Appellant filed a notice of appeal. The court ordered Appellant to file a

Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) Statement; Attorney Heller responded with a Rule

1925(c)(4) Statement indicating that she intended to file an Anders brief.

The court filed a Rule 1925(a) Opinion setting forth the procedural history

before concluding that it “finds no issues which would entitle Appellant to

relief.” Opinion, 2/27/25.

Counsel filed her Anders brief and a motion to withdraw her

representation. In the brief, counsel raised one issue: “Did the trial court

abuse its discretion allowing [sic] York County offenses to proceed to trial in

Chester County?” Anders Br. at 8.

As a preliminary matter, we address Attorney Heller’s request to

withdraw. “When presented with an Anders Brief, this Court may not review

the merits of the underlying issues without first passing on the request to

withdraw.” Commonwealth v. Daniels, 999 A.2d 590, 593 (Pa. Super.

2010) (citation omitted). For counsel to withdraw from an appeal pursuant to

Anders, our Supreme Court has determined that counsel must meet the

following requirements:

(1) provide a summary of the procedural history and facts, with citations to the record;

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(2) refer to anything in the record that counsel believes arguably supports the appeal;

(3) set forth counsel’s conclusion that the appeal is frivolous; and

(4) state counsel’s reasons for concluding that the appeal is frivolous. Counsel should articulate the relevant facts of record, controlling case law, and/or statutes on point that have led to the conclusion that the appeal is frivolous.

Commonwealth v. Santiago, 978 A.2d 349, 361 (Pa. 2009).

Attorney Heller has complied with the mandated procedure for

withdrawing as counsel. Additionally, she confirms that she sent Appellant a

copy of the Anders Brief and Petition to Withdraw, as well as a letter

explaining to Appellant that he has the right to retain new counsel, proceed

pro se, or raise any additional points. See Commonwealth v. Millisock,

873 A.2d 748, 751 (Pa. Super. 2005) (describing notice requirements).

Appellant has not responded to counsel’s Anders brief or her motion to

withdraw.

Because counsel has satisfied the above requirements, we will first

address the substantive issue raised in the Anders Brief. Subsequently, we

must “conduct a simple review of the record to ascertain if there appear on its

face to be arguably meritorious issues that counsel, intentionally or not,

missed or misstated.” Commonwealth v. Dempster, 187 A.3d 266, 272 (Pa.

Super. 2018) (en banc).

As articulated by counsel, Appellant is challenging the denial of his

motion to remove the York County offenses from the Chester County

prosecution, contending that York County was the more appropriate venue for

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the offenses that occurred when A.L. was between the ages of nine and ten

years old. See Anders Br. at 12-14. The brief asserts that “it could be

argued that the incidents here were not logically or temporally related because

the allegations spanned years and were alleged to have occurred in different

locations.” Id. at 15. “The crux of the analysis in this case is whether the

multiple Chester County and York County incidents constitute a single criminal

episode as outlined in Pa.R.Crim.P. 103 [sic] and interpreted by the courts.”

Id.

We review challenges to venue determinations to ascertain whether the

trial court’s factual findings are supported by the record and its conclusions of

law are free of legal error. Commonwealth v. Witmayer, 144 A.3d 939,

946 (Pa. Super. 2016).

Pa.R.Crim.P. 130, pertaining to venue, provides that “[w]hen charges

arising from the same criminal episode occur in more than one judicial district,

the criminal proceeding on all the charges may be brought before one issuing

authority in a magisterial district within any of the judicial districts in which

the charges arising from the same criminal episode occurred.” Pa.R.Crim.P.

130(A)(3). Thus, “a condition precedent to the exercise by a single county to

jurisdiction in a case involving multiple offenses in various counties is[ ]the

offense must constitute a single criminal episode.” Witmayer, 144 A.3d at

946 (citations omitted).

“If a number of charges are logically or temporally related and share

common issues of law and fact, a single criminal episode exists.” Id. (citation

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omitted). Thus, “the definition of a ‘single criminal episode’ should not be

limited to acts which are immediately connected in time. ‘Transaction’ is a

word of flexible meaning. It may comprehend a series of many occurrences,

depending not so much upon the immediateness of their connection as upon

their logical relationship.” Id. (quoting Commonwealth v. Kohler, 811 A.2d

1046, 1049-50 (Pa. Super. 2002) (citation omitted).

In Witmayer, supra, the appellant sexually abused a child in both

Montgomery and Chester Counties, beginning when the child was very young

and continuing into the child’s teenage years. The Commonwealth charged the

appellant in Montgomery County and three days later sought to amend its

criminal information to include the phrase “County of Chester” that had been

mistakenly omitted. Id. at 947. After hearing argument, the court granted

the motion to amend, concluding that the crimes that occurred in Chester

County were part of the same criminal episode that occurred in Montgomery

County. On appeal, this Court found no error in the trial court’s reasoning

that the incidents of sexual abuse that occurred over several years were

“logically and temporally related” and, therefore, we concluded that the court

did not err in allowing the amendment to the information.

The trial court in the instant case concluded that the alleged incidents

of Appellant’s abuse of A.L. were “logically and temporally . . . related and it’s

an ongoing continuous course of conduct and that the allegations as to what

happened in Chester County are substantially the same as the allegations that

happened in York County.” N.T., 9/11/23, at 5.

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Applying the reasoning of Witmayer, and based on our review of the

record, we find no error in the court’s conclusion that Appellant’s sexual abuse

of A.L. that occurred in two different counties over a period of six years

comprised a single criminal episode so as to satisfy the requirements of Rule

130. Accordingly, we agree with counsel that this issue is frivolous.

Following our independent review of the record, we discern no issues of

arguable merit to be raised on appeal. Dempster, 187 A.3d at 272. We,

thus, affirm the judgment of sentence and grant counsel’s motion to withdraw.

Judgment of Sentence affirmed. Motion to Withdraw granted.

Date: 8/11/2025

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