Commonwealth v. Ellis, R.

• Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
• Decided: July 8, 2025
• Docket: 186 WAL 2024
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA WESTERN DISTRICT

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, : No. 186 WAL 2024 : Respondent : : Petition for Allowance of Appeal : from the Unpublished v. : Memorandum and Order of the : Superior Court at No. 344 WDA : 2023, entered on April 5, 2024, ROMAN ELLIS, : affirming the PCRA Order of the : Allegheny County Court of Common Petitioner : Pleas at No. CP-02- : CR-0007677-1994, entered on February 14, 2023

ORDER

PER CURIAM

AND NOW, this 8th day of July, 2025, we GRANT the Petition for Allowance of

Appeal, in part, LIMITED TO Petitioner’s first issue, VACATE the Superior Court’s

decision to the extent that it affirmed the PCRA court’s dismissal of Petitioner’s

after-discovered evidence claim relative to the impartiality of the jury as untimely filed

under Section 9545(b)(1)(ii) of the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA), 42 Pa. C.S.

§ 9545(b)(1)(ii) (providing exception to PCRA’s one-year jurisdictional time-bar when

petitioner pleads and proves that “facts upon which the claim is predicated were unknown

to the petitioner and could not have been ascertained by the exercise of due diligence”),

and REMAND the matter to the Superior Court to consider the timeliness of Petitioner’s

PCRA petition under the appropriate standard—i.e., by applying the standard relative to

the newly discovered facts exception to the PCRA’s jurisdiction time-bar rather than the

after-discovered evidence standard. See 42 Pa. C.S. § 9543(a)(2)(vi) (“To be eligible for

relief under this subchapter, the petitioner must plead and prove by a preponderance of the evidence . . . [t]hat the conviction or sentence resulted from . . . [t]he unavailability at

the time of trial of exculpatory evidence that has subsequently become available and

would have changed the outcome of the trial if it had been introduced.”). Allocatur is

DENIED as to all remaining issues.

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