Pennsylvania v. Dimatteo

by
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted review in this case to assess what relief, if any, a criminal defendant is entitled to when he raises an illegal sentencing challenge premised on Alleyne v. United States, 133 S.Ct. 2151 (2013) in a timely petition filed pursuant to the Pennsylvania Post Conviction Relief Act when, at the time Alleyne was decided, the defendant’s judgment of sentence was not yet final. Appellee Phillip DiMatteo, entered into an open guilty plea to 56 counts of possession with intent to deliver (PWID) and one count each of criminal conspiracy and corrupt organizations. The charges stemmed from a drug operation in which DiMatteo and fourteen other individuals were involved in trafficking cocaine. Relevant to the issue, the Commonwealth sought imposition of the mandatory minimum sentence under 18 Pa.C.S. 7508 which set various mandatory minimum sentences for certain violations of The Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act, including PWID, predicated on the weight and classification of the controlled substance. The trial court imposed mandatory minimum sentences pursuant to Section 7508 on 55 counts of PWID, structuring its sentence, by ordering certain sentences to run concurrently and others consecutively, such that DiMatteo faced an aggregate sentence of fifteen to thirty years’ imprisonment. The sentencing court denied his motion for reconsideration. Five days after that denial, Alleyne was handed down, holding that any fact which, by law, increased the mandatory minimum sentence for a crime must be: (1) treated as an element of the offense, as opposed to a sentencing factor; (2) submitted to the jury; and (3) found beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that at the time DiMatteo entered into his open guilty plea, there was no “shared misapprehension” regarding the legality of the sentences that could be imposed, and there was no agreement or bargain between the Commonwealth and DiMatteo as to sentencing at all. The sentencing court did not impose its sentence under a misconception over what sentence it could impose under law. Alleyne rendered the mandatory minimum schemes with the defective judicial fact-finding procedure illegal. “This is not an occasion where a defendant and the Commonwealth bargained for a term of imprisonment, and the defendant reneged. . . . the remedy is a correction of the illegal sentence.” View "Pennsylvania v. Dimatteo" on Justia Law