Superior Court dismisses murder conviction appeal

John Gebauer waited too long to file a petition challenging his 2004 guilty plea and sentence for fatally shooting his mother at their Fallowfield Township farm when he was 15, a state appellate court decided.
A three-judge panel of the Superior Court Monday affirmed a Washington County judge’s decision dismissing Gebauer’s petition under the state Post-Conviction Relief Act, calling it “patently untimely” and saying he failed to show it fell under any of the exceptions that would have allowed him to file it after the deadline.
Gebauer, now 30, shot Alison Gebauer, 47, in the head Feb. 13, 2002, before he sexually abused her corpse and fled in her family’s truck. Charleroi police stopped his pickup truck shortly after midnight because he was driving erratically and took him to the station, where he confessed. State police found Alison Gebauer’s body in a barn behind the family’s home.
Edward Gebauer, Alison’s husband, was out of town at the time. The couple had adopted the teen about three years earlier.
John Gebauer pleaded guilty as an adult in October 2004 to third-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, possession of a firearm by a minor, theft of a firearm, theft of a credit card and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle in an agreement with prosecutors. Judge Katherine B. Emery sentenced him to 37 ½ to 75 years in state prison late that year. He is housed at the SCI-Houtzdale in Clearfield County, according to state prison records.
Justice Jack Panella said in the ruling Gebauer had one year from the Jan. 8, 2005, date his sentence became final to file a petition under the PCRA. Instead, he waited more than six years to file the first such petition – which he later amended – by himself in March 2011. Two separate attorneys withdrew from the case after being appointed by the court.
Emery later dismissed Gebauer’s petition, finding he’d missed the deadline.
Panella said in the ruling Gebauer, who also represented himself in his appeal of that decision, “makes a series of undeveloped arguments pertaining to the alleged vagueness of the charges against him; the purported excessiveness of his sentence, in light of the fact that he was a juvenile at the time of the murder; and imprecise assertions regarding plea counsel’s ineffectiveness” but “does not articulate how any of these claims might fall within the PCRA’s time-bar exceptions, nor does he allege that he raised these issues within 60 days of their discovery” as required by state law.