PA SUPREME COURT AFFIRMS SUPERIOR COURT’S DETERMINATION: TEN YEAR MANDATORY SENTENCE FOR INVOLUNTARY DEVIATE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
The PA Supreme Court has decided the case of Commonwealth v. Wolfe, No. 68 MAP 2015 (June 20, 2016), upholding the Superior Court’s determination that the ten year mandatory minimum sentencing scheme for Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse was facially unconstitutional.
FACTS
In August 2012, Appellee, an eighteen-year-old male, engaged in sexual intercourse with a thirteen-year-old girl on several occasions. He was charged with and convicted in a jury trial of a number of sexual offenses, including two counts of Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse. This statute prescribes, as a general rule, that it is a felony of the first degree to engage in deviate sexual intercourse with a complainant who is less than sixteen years of age.
During Wolfe’s trial and prior to sentencing, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its Alleyne decision, overruling its own prior precedent and establishing a new constitutional rule of law, grounded on the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Alleyne Court held that any fact that, by law, increases the penalty for a crime must be treated as an element of the offense, submitted to a jury rather than a judge, and found beyond a reasonable doubt. The opinion also explained that the requirement to treat factors triggering at-law mandatory sentencing enhancements as offense elements “enables the defendant to predict the legally applicable penalty from the face of the indictment.”
The effect of Alleyne’s new rule was to invalidate a range of Pennsylvania sentencing statutes predicating mandatory minimum penalties upon non-elemental facts and requiring such facts to be determined by a preponderance of the evidence at sentencing.
In October 2013, the sentencing court imposed mandatory minimum sentences of ten years upon Wolfe for each IDSI offense, albeit that the court specified that those sentences would run concurrently. The record contains no evidence that the sentencing court conducted any independent inquiry or assessment relative to determining the victim’s age, as directed by the applicable statute.
Wolfe pursued relief in a direct appeal; however, he did not raise a challenge to his sentences under Alleyne. However, the Superior Court invoked Alleyne sua sponte (i.e. – “on its own”) and vacated the judgments of sentence, remanding for resentencing. The majority explained at that time that ordinary waiver principles do not apply to “the legality of the sentence,” and that illegal sentences may be corrected by appellate courts of their own accord.
ISSUE
Whether the Superior Court correctly determined, sua sponte that the ten year mandatory minimum sentence for Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse was facially unconstitutional?
HOLDING
The Superior Court was correct to make the determination sua sponte and correct on the merits: The sentencing statute at issue is irremediably unconstitutional on its face, non-severable, and void.
REASONING
Wolfe’s core position was that there simply can be no mandatory minimum sentence without valid statutory authorization and unconstitutional statutes are of no effect. Therefore, reinstatement of his mandatorily-imposed minimum sentence would be tantamount to the same sort of rewriting of a statute, and transformation of legislative sentencing commands previously rejected by the PA Supreme Court.
Wolfe maintained that statutes violating Alleyne in the manner discussed in previous case law are facially void, and no minimum sentence could have been imposed.
The PA Supreme Court first acknowledged that the asserted Apprendi-line constitutional violation implicated the legality of a sentence and could therefore be addressed sua sponte.
Additionally, the PA Supreme Court agreed with Wolfe’s counsel from the Lancaster County Public Defender’s Office and his amicus, the Defender Association of Philadelphia, that a sentence based on an unconstitutional statute that is incapable of severance is void.
Although the jury at Wolfe’s trial plainly decided that the victim was under sixteen years of age, the sentencing court was bound to make its own determination at sentencing; but, it could not do so in a manner consistent with the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, on account of the Alleyne decision from the U.S. Supreme Court issued during Wolfe’s trial and prior to his sentencing.
The PA Supreme Court clearly maintained that it did not believe that it was an appropriate function of the judiciary to create new aggravated crimes, via severance or otherwise, and that it was beyond its constitutionally prescribed authority and purview to transform a sentencing factor – which the Legislature has specifically mandated “shall not be an element of the crime” – into an offense element.
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