Opinion
No. 85 M.D. 2011
05-25-2012
Jeffrey Neal Saxberg, Petitioner v. Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections Court of Common Pleas Lancaster County, Respondents
ORDER
AND NOW, this 25th day of May, 2012, upon consideration of Respondent Pennsylvania Department of Corrections' Application for Reconsideration and Petitioner's Motion to Quash, which has been construed as an answer to the Application, the Application is hereby DENIED.
The full caption of Petitioner's motion is "Motion To Quash DOC's Amended Motion And Application For Reconsideration / Motion To Proceed To Judgement [sic] On Accepted Plead [sic] Facts."
We note that the Department is seeking reconsideration based upon an argument that it failed to raise in its preliminary objections and, therefore, the argument is waived. However, even if not waived, there is no merit to the Department's argument that the proper means of clarifying whether the sentencing court ordered costs as part of Saxberg's sentence is for Saxberg to raise the issue in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. See, e.g., Commonwealth ex. rel. Fortune v. Dragovich, 792 A.2d 1257, 1259 (Pa. Super. 2002) (citations omitted) (stating that, "[t]he availability of habeas corpus in Pennsylvania is both prescribed and limited by statute [42 Pa. C.S. §§ 6502-6503] . . . [s]ubject to these provisions, the writ may issue when no other remedy is available for the condition the petitioner alleges or available remedies are exhausted or ineffectual . . . . Accordingly, the writ may be used only to extricate a petitioner from illegal confinement or to secure relief from conditions of confinement that constitute cruel and unusual punishment."). See also Commonwealth v. Snyder, 829 A.2d 783 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2003) (wherein petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus to challenge the denial of parole, the court held that a habeas corpus petition may be used only to challenge the legality of a sentence, that is, the state's right to confine the inmate or the length of confinement, and not the denial of parole); Chadwick v. Caulfield, 834 A.2d 562, 566 (Pa. Super. 2003) (holding that habeas corpus lies to correct void or illegal sentences or an illegal detention, or where the record shows a trial or sentence or plea is so fundamentally unfair as to amount to a denial of due process or other constitutional rights, or where for other reasons the interests of justice imperatively require it).
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