In the Interest of D.Y.

34 A.3d 177, 2011 Pa. Super. 267, 2011 Pa. Super. LEXIS 4301
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedDecember 13, 2011
StatusPublished
Cited by30 cases

This text of 34 A.3d 177 (In the Interest of D.Y.) 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
In the Interest of D.Y., 34 A.3d 177, 2011 Pa. Super. 267, 2011 Pa. Super. LEXIS 4301 (Pa. Ct. App. 2011).

Opinions

OPINION BY

ALLEN, J.:

D.Y. (“Appellant”) appeals from the dis-positional order entered after he was adjudicated delinquent on charges of burglary, criminal trespass, theft by unlawful taking, receiving stolen property and criminal mischief.1 We affirm.

On April 1, 2009, an adjudicatory hearing convened, during which Appellant and the Commonwealth stipulated to the following facts. Between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. on October 10, 2008, Rasheedah Francis returned to the home she shared with her husband and daughter at 1520 North 60th Street in Philadelphia. When Ms. Francis arrived, she found her front door wide open, her back door damaged, and a back window open. The house had been ransacked, and jewelry, electronics and cash totaling $14,000 had been stolen.

The Commonwealth thereafter presented the only two witnesses to testify at the hearing: Philadelphia Police Detective Ro-seanna Filippello, and Fingerprint Technician Clifford Parson.

Detective Filippello testified to being called to Ms. Francis’ home on the evening of October 10, 2008, and lifting fingerprints from the glass pane of the open back window. N.T., 4/1/09, at 9-12. Detective Filippello sent the lifted fingerprints to the latent print section of the Philadelphia Police Department to be compared with fingerprints kept on record. Id. at 14-15.

Fingerprint Technician Clifford Parson testified to working in the Philadelphia Police Department for fifteen years, where he analyzed and observed crime scene prints. Id. at 17. Technician Parson explained that in this case, he received the fingerprints collected by Detective Filip-pello, and entered them in the automatic fingerprint identification system, where the prints came back as a positive match for a “ten print card.”2 Id. at 21-22. Technician Parson averred that “the unique characteristics matched. That’s where you get a positive identification ... what I saw is that the unique characteristics from the latent print matched the known print of [Appellant].” Id. at 24-25.

[180]*180At the conclusion of the April 1, 2009 hearing, the juvenile court adjudicated Appellant delinquent on all charges and entered a disposition continuing Appellant’s placement at a juvenile facility. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal on April 17, 2009.

On December 3, 2010, a three-judge panel of this Court filed an opinion in which the majority reversed Appellant’s adjudication. The Commonwealth filed an application for reargument en banc. By per curiam order on February 1, 2011, this Court granted the Commonwealth’s application for reargument, withdrew its December 3, 2010 decision, directed the case to be listed before an en banc panel, and instructed the parties to refile the briefs previously filed, together with supplemental briefs, or prepare and file substituted briefs. Both parties filed substituted briefs.

Appellant disputes the admissibility of the evidence presented by the Commonwealth through the testimony of the fingerprint technician. Appellant asserts that the juvenile court improperly admitted Technician Parson’s hearsay testimony. Appellant expressly presents the following issue:

Did not the [juvenile] court err in admitting at [Appellant’s] adjudicatory hearing, under the rubric of “expert testimony,” hearsay information establishing [Appellant’s] identity (to wit, that the fingerprints on a “10 print card,” which matched latent prints taken from the scene of the crime, were [Appellant’s] fingerprints), where that hearsay information was not necessary to the expert’s testimony, where the expert’s testimony was used to bypass the otherwise applicable rules of evidence and where the expert merely functioned as a conduit for the otherwise inadmissible hearsay?

Appellant’s Substituted Brief at 3.

Similarly, the Commonwealth frames the issue:

Did the juvenile court act within its discretion in permitting a fingerprint examiner to offer his expert opinion that a fingerprint lifted from a window of the burglarized property was [Appellant’s]?

Commonwealth Substituted Reply Brief at 1.

At the outset, we note that the admission of the fingerprint technician’s hearsay testimony is the sole issue before us. We agree with the Commonwealth that “the questions of whether the fingerprint examiner's testimony was sufficient to prove [Appellant’s] identity as the burglar beyond a reasonable doubt and whether [Appellant’s] constitutional rights would be somehow violated by a finding that the burden of proof was met in this case are not before this Court.” Commonwealth Substituted Reply Brief at 1. Citing Commonwealth v. Rolan, 964 A.2d 398, 409 (Pa.Super.2008) and Commonwealth v. Constant, 925 A.2d 810, 824 (Pa.Super.2007), the Commonwealth accurately notes that these issues were not raised in Appellant’s original or supplemental Pa. R.A.P. 1925(b) statements, nor were they developed by Appellant in his briefs. Id. We further note that when the Commonwealth rested its case, Appellant did not make a motion for dismissal. Nor did Appellant file an optional post-dispositional motion as provided for in Pa.R.J.C.P. 520(A)((1) “The parties shall have the right to make a post-dispositional motion. All requests for relief from the court shall be stated with specificity and particularity, and shall be consolidated in the post-dispo-sitional motion.” (2) Issues raised before or during the adjudicatory hearing shall be deemed preserved for appeal whether or [181]*181not the party elects to file a post-disposi-tional motion on those issues.”). Accordingly, the juvenile court in its Pa.R.A.P. 1925(a) opinion did not address the issues of whether the fingerprint expert’s testimony was sufficient to sustain Appellant’s adjudication, or whether Appellant’s constitutional rights had somehow been violated. Those issues are not properly before us.

Although Appellant has waived any challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, we direct Appellant to Commonwealth v. Meals, 590 Pa. 110, 912 A.2d 213 (2006), in which our Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s reliance on expert testimony to determine that the defendant was a sexually violent predator. Our Supreme Court in Meals found the defendant’s sufficiency challenge to be meritless, and in its analysis opined that defendant’s sufficiency claim was truly a weight claim. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reasoned:

To the extent [defendant] felt that the expert’s ‘diagnosis’ was not fully explained, did not square with accepted analyses of this disorder, or was simply erroneous, [defendant] certainly was free to introduce evidence to that effect and/or to argue to the factfinder that the Commonwealth’s expert’s conclusions should be discounted or ignored. But that argument would affect the weight, and not the sufficiency of the evidence.

Meals at 223-224 (citation and footnote omitted).

Similarly, Appellant in this case could have introduced evidence to contradict the fingerprint expert’s evidence presented by the Commonwealth. He did not.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
34 A.3d 177, 2011 Pa. Super. 267, 2011 Pa. Super. LEXIS 4301, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-the-interest-of-dy-pasuperct-2011.