The state Superior Court has thrown out Danelo Cavalcante’s appeal of his first-degree murder conviction, ruling that his decision to escape from Chester County Prison and be a fugitive for two weeks in the summer of 2023 meant he had technically waived his right to have the court consider his arguments that his conviction should be overturned.
In a seven-page order, Judge Timika Lane, writing for a three judge panel, cited case law showing that even though his attorney from the Chester County Public Defender’s Office filed paperwork related to his appeal, “a defendant who voluntarily escapes from confinement, and deliberately chooses to become a fugitive from justice, may forfeit the right to appellate review.”
Cavalcante’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Maria Heller, filed a notice of appeal on Sept. 1, 2023, a day after Cavalcante infamously “crab-walked” up an outdoor set of walls in an exercise yard at the prison, climbed onto the roof, and made his way outside of the fenced in prison yard.
That motion was denied by Common Pleas Judge Patrick Carmody the same day.
Cavalcante was captured after a massive manhunt that spanned the county on Sept. 13, 2023. Heller filed a formal appeal of Carmody’s decision on Sept. 29.
But in her order quashing the appeal, Lane said that because he had deliberately chosen to “bypass the orderly procedures afforded to one convicted of a crime for challenging his conviction,” he was not entitled to have the initial appeal stop the 30-day clock for filings.
So even though Heller filed her notice of appeal on Sept. 29, it should have been filed by Sept. 21, 30 days after Carmody sentenced him to the mandatory term of life in prison without parole, plus 2½ to five years. Thus by escaping, he gave up the timely nature of his appeal and Lane ordered it dismissed.
Heller had said that Carmody erred in allowing testimony about prior incidents of alleged abuse of his girlfriend, Deborah Brandao, and that he had improperly held against Cavalcante his right to trial in sentencing him and had gone above the sentencing guidelines without giving a reason.
Nathan Schenker, the chief county Public Defender, declined to comment on the ruling.
Cavalcante, 35, who lived in Montgomery County and northern Chester County after he entered the United States illegally from his native Brazil, is current incarcerated at the state prison, SCI Greene, in Waynesburg, Greene County.
In August, Cavalcante entered a guilty plea before Judge Allison Bell Royer to charges related to his escape, including breaking into a home near the Chester County Prison and stealing a rifle from a northern Chester County homeowner. As part of the sentence negotiated by the state Attorney General’s Office and Cavalcante’s attorney, he was given an added 15 years in state prison to the mandatory life without parole sentence he received for the murder of his estranged girlfriend in 2021.
On Aug. 16, 2023, the jury that had heard Brandao’s daughter testify that she watched as Cavalcante stabbed her mother more than 30 times outside their Schuylkill home found him guilty of first-degree murder and possession of an instrument of crime in the same venue — stately Courtroom One of the county Justice Center —where he entered his plea to the escape charges. The panel took less than 20 minutes to reach its verdict.
To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.
Source: Berkshire mont