Com. v. Sanders, E.

Opinion

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF : PENNSYLVANIA :

v. :

: :

ELIOT SHANNON SANDERS :

:

Appellant : No. 2265 EDA 2025

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence Entered July 22, 2025 In the Court of Common Pleas of Chester County Criminal Division at No(s): CP-15-CR-0000577-2024

BEFORE: PANELLA, P.J.E., NICHOLS, J., and KING, J.

MEMORANDUM BY NICHOLS, J.: FILED AUGUST 17, 2026

Appellant Eliot Shannon Sanders appeals from the judgment of sentence

imposed following his convictions for two counts of access device fraud; theft

by unlawful taking; theft of property lost, mislaid or delivered by mistake;

receiving stolen property; and identity theft.1 On appeal, Appellant challenges

the weight of the evidence. Following our review, we affirm.

The trial court set forth the facts of this case as follows:

[Appellant] testified that when he opened the store on Christmas Eve, 2023, the registers were having issues, and he had to manually put in the promo codes. [Appellant] claimed that he used dummy transactions to look up promo codes for customers.

* * *

Holly Perez [(the Victim)] testified that she was at the Game Stop on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2023, to purchase a $35 gift

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1 18 Pa.C.S. §§ 4106(a)(1)(ii), (iv); 3921(a); 3924; 3925(a); and 4120(a),

respectively.

card. She took her debit card out of her purse and placed it in her coat pocket. She identified [Appellant] in open court and testified that he processed her transaction. She identified a still image taken from the Game Stop security footage depicting herself and [Appellant] in the store on that date. She did not make any other Game Stop purchases that day.

On December 26, 2023, [the Victim] noticed that her blue Chase debit card with four Frozen characters on it was missing. Her banking app and bank statement showed that $250 was withdrawn from her account on December 24, 2023, in a Game Stop transaction at the store she visited. [The Victim] did not authorize that $250 transaction and did not give anyone permission to use her bank account. [The Victim] was asked if she gave [Appellant] permission to use her debit card on December 24th and she responded, “Absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, no.”

Edward Eisenhard testified that he began working at Game Stop in November 2022 and was [Appellant’s] store manager at Game Stop at the time this incident occurred. He was contacted by law enforcement regarding a stolen credit card on Christmas Eve that was used at the Game Stop. Mr. Eisenhard pulled the transaction receipts and the surveillance footage from the time in question. He testified how [Appellant] used his employee ID number and PIN to run the transaction in question. Mr. Eisenhard testified about the surveillance footage and explained what [Appellant] was doing, including picking up a card off the floor and using it to eventually activate the Game Stop Mastercard after it failed to add value to a Meta card first.

Mr. Eisenhard further testified that Game Stop does not have any gift cards with Frozen characters on them. [Appellant] never reported anything unusual with the system, never reported a locked or frozen system, and never reported finding another person’s debit card. [Mr. Eisenhard] trained [Appellant] on the computer system. He did not train [Appellant] on how to unlock or unfreeze the computer system because it did not happen often. He never trained [Appellant] to swipe another card to unlock or unfreeze the system. Inserting a card would not be a method to unlock or unfreeze the system. The method to resolve a locked or frozen system would be to turn off the system and turn it back on. Mr. Eisenhard never tried to use another card if the system was stuck because it would make no sense to do that. He testified, “If the system’s locked, why attempt to use a card to unlock a

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system that's already locked. You obviously know that the register is locked. So, trying to scan something or swipe something on a locked system is null and void. It’s like throwing a bucket of water into a rainstorm at that point.”

Police Officer Zachary Fifer testified about his investigation into this incident and testified about lining up the video surveillance footage of [Appellant’s] actions with the time on the receipts for the transaction of using the lost debit card to make the $250 Game Stop Mastercard purchase. Specifically, the officer testified that he observed [Appellant] bend over to pick up an unknown item on the ground where [the Victim] had been standing and “[a]t no point that I did observe in reviewing the footage that anybody else bent over to grab.”

Trial Ct. Op., 11/03/25, at 8, 20-23 (some formatting altered and citations

omitted).

On June 18, 2025, a jury convicted Appellant of the above stated

offenses. On July 22, 2025, the trial court sentenced Appellant to concurrent

two-year probation sentences on each conviction except receiving stolen

property, which it found merged. Appellant filed a post-sentence motion

challenging the weight of the evidence, which the trial court denied. Appellant

filed a timely notice of appeal. Both Appellant and the trial court complied

with Pa.R.A.P. 1925.

On appeal, Appellant raises one issue for our review:

Was the jury’s verdict on all convictions against the weight of the evidence presented?

Appellant’s Brief at 2 (some formatting altered).2

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2 We note that in his Rule 1925(b) statement, Appellant also raised additional

claims asserting that the Commonwealth presented insufficient evidence of (Footnote Continued Next Page)

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Weight of the Evidence

In Appellant’s only issue on appeal, Appellant challenges the weight of

the evidence.3 See id. Specifically, Appellant argues that he credibly testified

that while working at Game Stop, Appellant used a card he found on the floor

in an attempt to unlock a frozen transaction. See id. at 11. Additionally,

Appellant argues that he believed that the debit card was a gift card. See id.

at 15-16. Appellant contends he did not obtain the Victim’s property for

himself or deprive the Victim of her property. See id. at 11. Appellant further

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the requisite mens rea necessary to sustain all convictions, the trial court abused its discretion in not allowing defense counsel to present evidence regarding Appellant’s educational background and experience in computer science and computer information technology, and the trial court abused its discretion by not allowing Appellant to present evidence that he was not in need of money which was relevant to his lack of intent or motive to commit the offenses. See Rule 1925(b) Statement, 10/22/25. However, Appellant has not presented any arguments in support of these claims in his appellate brief. Therefore, the claims are abandoned for purposes of appeal. See Pa.R.A.P. 2116(a); see also Commonwealth v. Felder, 247 A.3d 14, 20 (Pa. Super. 2021) (stating that “an issue identified on appeal but not developed in the appellant’s brief is abandoned and, therefore, waived” (citation and emphasis omitted)).

3 It is well established that, in order to preserve a weight of the evidence claim

for appeal, a defendant must raise it before the trial court in a motion for a new trial, either prior to sentencing or in a post-sentence motion. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 607(A). “Failure to properly preserve the [weight of the evidence] claim will result in waiver.” Commonwealth v. Lofton, 57 A.3d 1270, 1273 (Pa. Super. 2012) (citation omitted).

Here, our review of the record reflects that Appellant raised his weight of the evidence challenge before the trial court in a timely post-sentence motion. See Post-Sentence Motion, 7/22/25. Accordingly, Appellant preserved his weight claim for our review. See Pa.R.Crim.P. 607(A).

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argues that video surveillance and Appellant’s testimony show Appellant never

took the Game Stop Mastercard outside of the store. See. id. at 15.

When reviewing a challenge to the weight of the evidence, we are

governed by the following standard of review:

A motion for a new trial based on a claim that the verdict is against the weight of the evidence is addressed to the discretion of the trial court. A new trial should not be granted because of a mere conflict in the testimony or because the judge on the same facts would have arrived at a different conclusion. Rather, the role of the trial judge is to determine that notwithstanding all the facts, certain facts are so clearly of greater weight that to ignore them or to give them equal weight with all the facts is to deny justice.

An appellate court’s standard of review when presented with a weight of the evidence claim is distinct from the standard of review applied by the trial court. Appellate review of a weight claim is a review of the exercise of discretion, not of the underlying question of whether the verdict is against the weight of the evidence.

Commonwealth v. Windslowe, 158 A.3d 698, 712 (Pa. Super. 2017)

(citations omitted).

As this Court has repeatedly stated,

[t]he weight of the evidence is exclusively for the finder of fact, who is free to believe all, none, or some of the evidence and to determine the credibility of the witnesses. Resolving contradictory testimony and questions of credibility are matters for the finder of fact. It is well-settled that we cannot substitute our judgment for that of the trier of fact.

* * *

Because the trial judge has had the opportunity to hear and see the evidence presented, an appellate court will give the gravest consideration to the findings and reasons advanced by the trial judge when reviewing a trial court’s determination that the verdict is against the weight of the evidence. One of the least assailable reasons for granting or denying a new trial is the lower court’s

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conviction that the verdict was or was not against the weight of the evidence and that a new trial should be granted in the interest of justice.

Furthermore, in order for a defendant to prevail on a challenge to the weight of the evidence, the evidence must be so tenuous, vague and uncertain that the verdict shocks the conscience of the court.

Commonwealth v. Spence, 290 A.3d 301, 311 (Pa. Super. 2023) (citations

omitted and formatting altered).

Here, the trial court addressed Appellant’s weight of the evidence claim

as follows:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has clearly said that “it is the trial court's sense of justice that must be shocked before a new trial may be granted on a claim that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence.” [Commonwealth v. Sullivan, 820 A.2d 795, 807, n. 11 (Pa. Super. 2003) (citing, Commonwealth v. Brown, 648 A.2d 1177, 1191 (Pa. 1994).] After a thorough review of the evidence, this court unequivocally determines that the guilty verdict on each of the charges is not against the weight of the evidence. To the contrary, the evidence strongly supports the verdict on each of the counts. The testimony from the witnesses was compelling, was corroborated by the testimony of other witnesses, and was corroborated by the admitted exhibits, including the surveillance video that shows [Appellant] committing the crimes. The jury’s verdict on these charges is not so contrary to the evidence as to shock one's sense of justice or conscience.

Trial Ct. Op., 11/03/25, at 26 (some formatting altered).

Following our review of the record, we discern no abuse of discretion by

the trial court. See Windslowe, 158 A.3d at 712. The main thrust of

Appellant’s weight of the evidence claim asks this Court to credit the testimony

of the Appellant over that of other witnesses. See Appellant’s Brief at 12-16.

Police Officer Zachary Fifer’s testimony and the surveillance video showed

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Appellant using the Victim’s card. See N.T., 6/17/25, at 62-94. The Victim

testified that she did not authorize the $250 transaction or give Appellant

permission to use her debit card. See N.T., 6/16/25, at 81. Mr. Eisenhard,

the Game Stop store manager, testified that Appellant’s proposed frozen-

transaction solution was not a method he had trained Appellant to use and

would not have been effective. See N.T., 6/17/25, at 52, 57-58. Further, Mr.

Eisenhard stated that Game Stop did not carry Frozen themed gift cards. See

id. at 51. The jury, as fact finder, was free to believe all, none, or some of

the evidence and to determine the credibility of each witness. See Spence,

290 A.3d at 311. Moreover, resolving contradictory or conflicting testimony,

and determining credibility are matters for the jury to resolve. See id. This

Court will not re-weigh the evidence or assess credibility, as this Court cannot

substitute its judgment for that of the finder of fact. See id. Accordingly, no

relief is due.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm Appellant’s judgment of sentence.

Judgment of sentence affirmed. Jurisdiction relinquished.

Date: 8/17/2026