Inmates claim state criminal laws were voided | PoconoRecord.com

By RILEY YATES

May 06, 2013

Unbeknownst to most law-abiding citizens, Pennsylvania has had no criminal laws for the past 45 years.

Shocked?

A number of inmates say it's so.

In appeals, now popular in Northampton County, state prisoners insist they have found the keys to their cells. Because of a mistake when the state's constitution was rewritten in 1968, Pennsylvania has been a lawless society, lacking any criminal code.

Though the claims have been called "gobbledygook" by one Easton public defender, and "patently without merit" by the Superior Court, they are the subject of at least four recent post-conviction relief appeals in Northampton County that are costing time and money.

Lawless state

The gist of the appeals is that when Pennsylvania last held a constitutional convention in 1967-68, it failed to put in place a "savings clause" to carry over the state's criminal laws.

As a result, they were all voided when voters ratified the changes in April 1968.

Never mind that the convention delegates, judges, lawyers and lawmakers have never noticed the need for such a clause.

Or that the Legislature has been passing or modifying laws regularly since then. Or that thousands and thousands of people have been punished for violating those supposedly nonexistent statutes ? including three men who were put to death by the state.

"So if I follow your argument," Northampton County Judge Paula Roscioli asked one inmate using the premise as the basis of his appeal in June, "then no one in Pennsylvania can be convicted of any crimes, and we should just open up the doors of all of our prisons and let everyone out?"

"Yes, ma'am, I'm afraid, although it is a delicate [proposition]," replied Eric D. Vernon, 42, who pleaded guilty in 2010 to child pornography and other charges and is serving up to 10? years at Albion State Prison in Erie County.

"By the way the law is, Pennsylvania does not have the constitutional authority as of this moment, the constitutional authority to prosecute misdemeanors and felonies," said the former west Easton man, who was unsuccessful in overturning his conviction.

Draining

But while the appeals may seem on their face absurd or even humorous, they are draining time, resources and money from all levels of a court system that could otherwise be focusing on more legitimate claims, said legal officials.

The monetary price is significant, though it is difficult to place an exact figure on, Northampton County Court Administrator James Onembo said.

Just bringing Vernon and the others to and from Albion is expensive.

Sheriff Randall Miller estimated the round trip costs at around $1,500 each time, factoring in two deputies' wages, overnight stays, meals and gas.

The prison, which is near Lake Erie, is a 370-mile, six-hour drive from the courthouse in Easton. That's just one piece of the effort required by the appeals.

Because the inmates are indigent, they are granted public defenders or court-appointed lawyers, who earn a fixed annual salary regardless of their workload.

But the cases still chew up those attorneys' time ? and that of a lot of other court employees.

For an appeal, most prisoners get one or more hearings before a judge, a courtroom appearance that also pulls in a law clerk, deputy sheriffs, court officers, a stenographer and a prosecutor.

There's the time both sides invest in legal briefs and of the judge in rendering a decision. Then there's a likely appeal to Superior Court, requiring more legal arguments and the time-consuming reproduction of the lower court's record. And after that, the possibility of further appeals.

"It adds up," Onembo said, underscoring that there is no "shortcut," given a prisoner's right to appeal. "I guess it would be considered safeguards of the system."

For Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, claims like the savings-clause argument is a waste of time.

Morganelli said he wishes there were provisions in place to allow judges to more easily dismiss frivolous appeals without the need for hearings or briefs.

"When a document is filed, unfortunately, the court has to respond to it. You just can't ignore it," Morganelli said. "No matter how crazy it is, generally speaking, we have to file an answer to it. So there's a cost, we have to divert our resources away from other things and respond to this nonsense."

Dismissed

The origin of the claims Vernon and the others are making are murky. But they are widespread enough that they were debated in 2007 and 2008 in a series of inmate letters to "Graterfriends," a monthly publication of the Pennsylvania Prison Society.

A template of one of the legal filings used by some of the Northampton County inmates can be found online.

The document acknowledges that releasing inmates "under these conditions, may very well be distasteful to say the least," but insists that the law nonetheless requires it.

At an appeal in August, Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano asked one Albion inmate where he got the information that prisoners were being let out because the constitution lacked a savings clause.

"Through inmates," said Christopher A. Ayala, 22, a former Bethlehem man serving five to 10 years for sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in 2010.

"And I guess the law of attraction," Ayala added.

"The law of attraction?" Giordano asked.

"Yes, positive thinking," Ayala said. "I don't know, it just came to me."

"Oh, OK," said Giordano, who dismissed Ayala's appeal in September, finding the constitution and the state's criminal code "validly enacted" and in his case "properly followed."

Like Vernon, Ayala has since challenged the decision in Superior Court.

Lawyers in a bind

For the court-appointed defense lawyers, such appeals leave them two options. They can research and write a "no-merit letter" to the judge in which they document their clients' claims and why they are baseless.

That sets them up to withdraw from the cases, which would leave defendants with the prospect of proceeding without a lawyer or hiring one privately.

Or the attorneys can decide simply to go through the motions of helping their clients make arguments with which they almost certainly disagree.

Susan Hutnik, a public defender assigned to Vernon's case, prepared a no-merit letter before Roscioli, though she remains his attorney in the appeal to Superior Court that he filed in September.

Hutnik said it is safe to say that there are criminal laws on the books in Pennsylvania. But she said she has nonetheless invested "significant" time investigating Vernon's allegations, including calling the Armstrong County District Attorney's Office and getting it to pull the file of the case that Vernon and others like to highlight.

A website Vernon directed her to, meanwhile, had no connection to criminal law, and was actually that of a Florida-based personal injury and medical malpractice law firm, Hutnik told Roscioli.

All of what Vernon offered had "nothing to do" with his claims, Hutnik said.

"I looked up all of the cases that he cited and reviewed them so I could explain to him why it had no merit," Hutnik said. "Honestly, the argument was so bizarre that I didn't understand what he was talking about."

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