### Sex Offender’s Late Appeal Shot Down Over Time Limit
Pennsylvania’s Superior Court affirmed the dismissal of Keith Vernon Davis’s second bid for post-conviction relief, ruling his petition was filed years too late under the strict one-year deadline of the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA). Davis, serving 7½ to 15 years for involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and aggravated indecent assault, couldn’t revive his ineffective counsel claims because he failed to prove any exception to the time bar. The court had no jurisdiction to even consider the merits.
It all started in 2017 when Davis pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a victim, landing the negotiated prison sentence after a failed attempt to back out of the deal. Appeals went nowhere: Superior Court upheld it in 2019, and the state Supreme Court denied review, making his conviction final by November that year. Davis’s first PCRA shot in 2020—alleging his lawyer botched alibi witnesses and had conflicts—crashed after hearings and another Superior Court affirmance in 2021.
Nearly four years later, in January 2025, Davis filed his second pro se PCRA petition, again hammering trial counsel’s ineffectiveness. The Cambria County court quickly flagged it as untimely under PCRA rules, which slam the door on petitions not filed within one year of final judgment unless the filer proves rare exceptions like new evidence, a constitutional violation not previously knowable, or government interference. Davis pled none in his filing and ignored the court’s notice of intent to dismiss without a hearing.
The Superior Court panel, in a December 8, 2025 order, agreed: no jurisdiction meant no dice. Davis tried slipping in a “government interference” argument in his appeal brief, but judges swatted it away—PCRA exceptions must be raised in the original petition, not sprung on appeal, per settled precedent like Commonwealth v. Burton. The order affirmed, leaving Davis’s claims dead in the water.