Com. v. Wilkins, M.

Opinion

J-S03012-26

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF : PENNSYLVANIA : v. : : : MICHAEL ALAN WILKINS : : Appellant : No. 697 MDA 2025

Appeal from the PCRA Order Entered May 15, 2025 In the Court of Common Pleas of Berks County Criminal Division at No(s): CP-06-CR-0003315-2013

BEFORE: DUBOW, J., BECK, J., and LANE, J.

MEMORANDUM BY DUBOW, J.: FILED: MARCH 3, 2026

Appellant, Michael Alan Wilkins, appeals pro se from the May 15, 2025

order dismissing his second petition filed pursuant to the Post Conviction Relief

Act (“PCRA”), 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 9541-46, as untimely. After careful review, we

affirm.

The facts and procedural history are largely immaterial to our

disposition. Briefly, on June 16, 2015, a jury convicted Appellant of three

counts of first-degree murder and other related offenses.1 On July 16, 2015,

the court sentenced Appellant to three consecutive sentences of life

imprisonment. On August 26, 2016, this Court affirmed Appellant’s judgment ____________________________________________

1 The Commonwealth also charged Appellant’s brother, Maurice Wilkins, with

the same offenses. On October 21, 2015, Mr. Wilkins entered a negotiated guilty plea to three counts of First-Degree Murder. At Mr. Wilkins’s guilty plea hearing he admitted that he committed the murders and that Appellant was his accomplice. See Commonwealth v. Wilkins, 2020 WL 5641226 at *3 (Pa. Super. filed Sept. 22, 2020) (non-precedential decision). J-S03012-26

of sentence. Commonwealth v. Wilkins, 156 A.3d 349 (Pa. Super. 2016)

(non-precedential decision). Appellant did not file a timely petition for

allowance of appeal, and, on February 2, 2017, our Supreme Court denied his

request for permission to file a petition for allowance of appeal nunc pro tunc.

Appellant’s judgment of sentence, thus, became final on September 26,

2016.2

In April 2017, Appellant filed a timely petition pursuant to the PCRA. On

June 5, 2019, Appellant’s court-appointed counsel filed an amended PCRA

petition claiming that Appellant’s trial counsel had been ineffective for not

calling as a witness Appellant’s brother, who allegedly would have testified

that Appellant was not involved in any of the crimes for which the jury had

convicted Appellant. According to Appellant, the basis for this allegation was

that at Appellant’s brother’s allocution in connection with his guilty plea to the

same three homicides nearly four months after Appellant’s conviction, his

brother stated that Appellant had nothing to do with the crimes. On January

8, 2020, the PCRA court denied Appellant’s petition as meritless, this Court

affirmed and on February 2, 2021, our Supreme Court denied Appellant’s

petition for allowance of appeal. See Commonwealth v. Wilkins, 240 A.3d

____________________________________________

2 See 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(3) (stating that a judgment of sentence “becomes

final at the conclusion of direct review, including discretionary review in the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, or the expiration of time for seeking the review.”).

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952 (Pa. Super. 2020) (non-precedential decision), appeal denied, 240 A.3d

952 (Pa. 2021).

On February 27, 2024, Appellant pro se filed the instant PCRA petition,

his second, in which he claimed that the Commonwealth had violated Brady

v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), by withholding “documented evidence” that

indicated that it had initially charged as a co-defendant a “key witness”—

Carlos Vargas-Osario—against Appellant, which Appellant contends was a fact

previously unknown to him. Petition, 2/27/24, at 3. He also claimed that Mr.

Vargas-Osario “made a statement to [Berks County Jail] and requested to

speak to a specific [d]etective, who[se] number was on a card in his wallet,”

and that the Commonwealth had not made Appellant aware of Mr. Vargas-

Osario’s cooperation with the Commonwealth. Id.

Conceding that the petition was untimely and with respect to

overcoming the PCRA’s time-bar, Appellant asserted that his brother provided

him with this information after filing his own PCRA petition by sending

Appellant the documents he received. Id. at 3-4. Appellant attached to his

petition a copy of a narrative report authored by Sergeant Jeffrey Douglass,

and dated January 14, 2013, memorializing the statement the Mr. Vargas-

Osario made to police in which he said he witnessed a man he identified as

“Maurice,” Appellant’s brother, “shoot people.” Id. at 11 (unpaginated).

Appellant also attached an April 25, 2013 Berks County Jail “Screen Print

Listing” indicating that Mr. Vargas-Osario and Appellant’s brother were “co-

defendants” in the murder trial, and a photocopy of a newspaper article

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indicating that the Commonwealth did not charge the Mr. Vargas-Osario in the

case, that the evidence clearly implicated Appellant and his brother, and that

the cases were closed. Appellant did not state in his petition when his brother

learned of the information underlying Appellant’s claim and Appellant did not

state when he learned of this information from his brother. Appellant also

failed to explain why he could not have learned of this information earlier with

the exercise of due diligence.

The PCRA court appointed counsel who filed a Turner/Finley3 no-merit

brief and a petition to withdraw as counsel, to which Appellant filed a response.

Counsel then filed a supplement to his no-merit brief addressing the issues

raised by Appellant in his response.

On January 14, 2025, the Commonwealth filed a court-ordered answer

to Appellant’s petition, in which the Commonwealth asserted that Appellant

failed to satisfy any of the exceptions to the PCRA’s time-bar because

Appellant’s claim that the Commonwealth had withheld from him the fact that

it had charged Mr. Vargas-Osario as a co-defendant in Appellant’s crimes is

factually inaccurate and is belied by “a review of the public docket sheets,”

which “reveals no criminal charges filed against [Mr.] Vargas-Osario related

to the instant murders” and the documents attached to the petition “do not

constitute the proof necessary to satisfy [any] exception to the [PCRA’s]

jurisdictional time limitations.” Answer, 1/14/25, at 5-6. The Commonwealth ____________________________________________

3 Commonwealth v. Turner, 544 A.2d 927 (Pa. 1988), Commonwealth

v. Finley, 550 A.2d 213 (Pa. Super. 1988) (en banc).

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also stated that Mr. Vargas-Osario’s cooperation with authorities prosecuting

these homicides “was well-documented in the discovery that was turned over

to trial counsel far in advance of trial,” and attached as proof copies of

discovery pages and a discovery letter showing receipt of these pages by trial

counsel. Id. at 6. The Commonwealth, thus, contended that “this information

is not a new fact—it is simply the same fact which has been known since before

trial in a different form.” Id.

Subsequently, Appellant filed several pro se requests related to the

court’s consideration of his petition and reasserting that the governmental

interference and newly discovered facts exceptions to the PCRA’s jurisdictional

time-bar excuse his otherwise untimely second PCRA petition.

On April 21, 2025, the PCRA court notified Appellant of its intent to

dismiss his PCRA petition without a hearing pursuant to Pa.R.Crim.P. 907,

indicating that Appellant had failed to satisfy either the governmental

interference or the newly discovered facts exception to the PCRA’s

jurisdictional time-bar because: (1) contrary to Appellant’s representations,

as a factual matter, the Commonwealth did not charge the witness, Mr.

Vargas-Osario, as a co-defendant in the crimes underlying this appeal; and

(2) the fact of Mr. Vargas-Osario’s cooperation with police was not newly

discovered evidence and had not been withheld by the Commonwealth

because “the entirety of [his] cooperation with the police—including a written

statement []—was provided in pretrial [d]iscovery[.]” Rule 907 Notice,

4/21/25, at 18-19. The court also found that Appellant did not explain why

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he could not have discovered the information underlying his claim earlier with

Appellant filed a pro se response to the Rule 907 notice on May 7, 2025.4

On May 15, 2025, the PCRA court dismissed Appellant’s petition as

untimely. This timely pro se appeal followed. Both Appellant and the PCRA

court complied with Pa.R.A.P. 1925.5

Appellant raises the following three issues on appeal:

1. Did the PCRA court err and abuse its discretion when it dismissed [Appellant’s] subsequent PCRA petition where the court failed to properly follow the law regarding 42 Pa.C.S.[] § 9545(b), when the only thing [Appellant] had to demonstrate was whether he met the time[-]bar requirement to submit a subsequent PCRA petition?

2. Did the PCRA court err when it dismissed [Appellant’s] subsequent PCRA petition on the ground that he had failed to meet [Sections] 9545(b)(1)(i) & (2) that government interference did occur?

3. Did the PCRA court err when it dismissed [Appellant’s] subsequent PCRA petition when it allowed PCRA counsel to withdraw from the case, thus leaving [Appellant] to present an issue with merit under Section 9545(b)(1)(i) & (2), thus violating his fundamental fairness right to a proper counsel[l]ed PCRA when the lower court appointed counsel in the subsequent petition, thus acknowledging that there was merit to the time[-]bar requirement?[6]

4 The PCRA court granted counsel’s petition to withdraw on May 5, 2025.

5 The PCRA court referred to its April 21, 2025 Rule 907 notice for the reasons

in support of its conclusion that Appellant failed to plead and prove any exceptions to the PCRA’s time-bar.

6 Appellant has not included any argument in support of this third issue in his

brief to this Court. We, thus, find that he has abandoned it.

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Appellant’s Br. at 4.

In his first two issues, Appellant challenges the trial court’s

determination that he failed to plead and prove the applicability of the

governmental interference or newly discovered facts exceptions to the PCRA’s

time-bar. Before we address the merits of Appellant’s claims, however, we

consider whether Appellant has preserved them for our review.

We review the denial of a PCRA petition to determine whether the record

supports the PCRA court’s findings and whether its order is otherwise free of

legal error. Commonwealth v. Fears, 86 A.3d 795, 803 (Pa. 2014). This

Court grants great deference to the findings of the PCRA court if they are

supported by the record. Commonwealth v. Boyd, 923 A.2d 513, 515 (Pa.

Super. 2007). “We give no such deference, however, to the court’s legal

conclusions.” Commonwealth v. Smith, 167 A.3d 782, 787 (Pa. Super.

2017).

As a preliminary matter, the timeliness of a PCRA petition is a

jurisdictional requisite. Commonwealth v. Hackett, 956 A.2d 978, 983 (Pa.

2008). Pennsylvania law is clear that no court has jurisdiction to hear an

untimely PCRA petition. Commonwealth v. Robinson, 837 A.2d 1157, 1161

(Pa. 2003). In order to obtain relief under the PCRA, a petition must be filed

within one year from the date the judgment of sentence became final. 42

Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1). Appellant’s petition, filed more than seven years after

his judgment of sentence became final, is facially untimely.

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Pennsylvania courts may consider an untimely PCRA petition, however,

if the petitioner pleads and proves one of the three exceptions to the time-bar

set forth in Section 9545(b)(1). Any petition invoking a timeliness exception

must be filed within one year of the date the claim could have been presented.

Id. § 9545(b)(2). Appellant argues that his claims satisfy the governmental

interference and newly discovered facts exceptions provided in Section

9545(b)(1)(i)-(ii). Appellant’s Br. at 8-10.

The governmental interference exception invoked by Appellant requires

the petitioner to prove that “the failure to raise the claim previously was the

result of interference by government officials with the presentation of the

claim in violation of the Constitution or laws of this Commonwealth or the

Constitution or laws of the United States[.]” 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(i); see

also Commonwealth v. Vinson, 249 A.3d 1197, 1205 (Pa. Super. 2021)

(explaining that to establish the government interference exception under

Section 9545(b)(1)(i), “a petitioner must plead and prove (1) the failure to

previously raise the claim was the result of interference by government

officials, and (2) the petitioner could not have obtained the information earlier

with the exercise of due diligence.”). As the Supreme Court has explained, a

Brady violation may constitute governmental interference; however, an

appellant may not “begin with a discussion of the merits of a Brady claim;

rather [he] must begin with a discussion of why the instant petition was timely

filed.” Commonwealth v. Stokes, 959 A.2d 306, 310 (Pa. 2008).

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To satisfy the newly discovered facts exception, a petitioner must plead

and prove “the facts upon which the claim is predicated were unknown to the

petitioner and could not have been ascertained by the exercise of due

diligence[.]” 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(ii). Our Supreme Court has held that

this exception “does not require any merits analysis of the underlying claim.”

Commonwealth v. Bennett, 930 A.2d 1264, 1271 (Pa. 2007). Rather the

exception merely requires the petitioner to plead and prove two elements: “1)

the facts upon which the claim was predicated were unknown and 2) could not

have been ascertained by the exercise of due diligence.” Id. at 1272 (internal

quotation marks omitted), citing 42 Pa.C.S. § 9545(b)(1)(ii).

Due diligence requires a petitioner to make reasonable efforts to

uncover facts that may support a claim for collateral relief. Commonwealth

v. Brensinger, 218 A.3d 440, 449 (Pa. Super. 2019). A petitioner must

explain why he could not have learned the new facts earlier by exercising due

diligence. Commonwealth v. Breakiron, 781 A.2d 94, 98 (Pa. 2001).

With respect to his claim that he satisfied the governmental interference

exception to the PCRA’s time-bar, Appellant baldly asserts that “[t]he

Commonwealth clearly interfered when they knowingly withheld this high [sic]

impeaching evidence that was damaging to their only alleged key witness.”

Appellant’s Br. at 9. He avers that he did not know of the existence of the

evidence, the information was not public, and he does not have access to

obtain such information on his own. Id. He further avers that he acted with

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due diligence by filing the instant petition within one year of “receiving the

exculpatory impeaching evidence.” Id.

Appellant sets forth a similar argument in support of his claim that the

court erred in finding that he did not satisfy the newly discovered facts

exception. In particular, he contends that he filed the instant petition

“immediately after receiving the documents form his brother in 2024, which

are impeaching toward the only alleged key witness for the prosecution.” Id.

at 8. He also avers that he was unaware of this information during the trial

process. Id.

Following our review, we agree with the PCRA court that Appellant failed

to plead and prove the applicability of the governmental interference and

newly discovered facts exceptions to the PCRA’s time-bar because, as noted

above, the “facts” discovered by Appellant were either not true or were

previously known to Appellant and Appellant did not provide any information

regarding when his brother learned of the information underlying Appellant’s

claim or when Appellant learned of this information from his brother.

Moreover, Appellant offered only a perfunctory explanation as to why he could

not have learned of this information earlier with the exercise of due diligence,

which, in any case, is belied by the record which shows that the

Commonwealth disclosed in pre-trial discovery the information regarding the

witness’s cooperation with the police. Because the record supports the PCRA

court’s findings and its order is otherwise free of legal error, we find that

Appellant’s claims fail to garner relief.

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Order affirmed.

Judgment Entered.

Benjamin D. Kohler, Esq. Prothonotary

Date: 3/03/2026

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