For the second time, the state Superior Court has denied the request of a Berks County man to file a private criminal complaint in Schuylkill County Court.
In a three-page opinion filed Monday in Pottsville, a three-judge Superior Court panel has upheld the refusal of the county court to allow M. Robert Ullman, Reading, to file the complaint.
Ullman raised no new issues that would justify overturning the county court's refusal to allow his complaint, Judge Susan Peikes Gantman wrote in the panel's opinion.
"Here, (Ullman) is unmistakably trying to relitigate the same claims against the same parties," Gantman wrote.
By so ruling, the panel upheld the Aug. 1, 2011, decision of county Judge John E. Domalakes, who had denied Ullman's request to be allowed to file the complaint based on alleged after-discovered evidence, which is evidence that was not, and could not have been, produced at a prior proceeding.
Domalakes also had ruled on May 8, 2009, that District Attorney, now Judge, James P. Goodman did not err in disapproving Ullman's private criminal complaint, a decision that the Superior Court had upheld in 2010. Approval by either the district attorney or county court is necessary before a person can file a private criminal complaint.
Ullman had sought to file a complaint seeking charges of perjury against the Pottsville law firm of Williamson, Friedberg & Jones and one of its partners, Joseph H. Jones. The courts have ruled that Ullman could not file the complaint because he had not provided sufficient evidence that any crime occurred.
In the panel's opinion, Gantman wrote that Ullman's assertion that new evidence, a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice, backs his claim is not true.
The letter does nothing more than review the history of the case and does not meet the legal definition of after-discovered evidence, according to Gantman.
"Nothing in the letter represents 'after-discovered evidence' of the kind to warrant new proceedings," Gantman wrote.
President Judge Correale F. Stevens and Judge John T. Bender, the other panel members, joined Gantman's opinion.
