For a second time, a three-judge state Superior Court panel has upheld the conviction and state prison sentence of an Auburn man who possessed drugs and paraphernalia in August 2010 in his residence.
Stephen S. Smith, 44, presented no evidence that his former lawyer represented him ineffectively, the panel ruled in an eight-page opinion filed Thursday.
“We discern no merit to the present appeal,” President Judge Emeritus Correale F. Stevens wrote in the panel’s opinion.
As a result, Smith will continue to serve his sentence in State Correctional Institution/Rockview in Centre County.
A Schuylkill County jury found Smith guilty on Oct. 24, 2012, of four counts each of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance and one each of possession of a small amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Judge Charles M. Miller, who presided over Smith’s trial, sentenced him on Dec. 7, 2012, to serve eight to 16 years in a state correctional institution, pay costs, $40,000 in fines, $100 to the Substance Abuse Education Fund, $50 to the Criminal Justice Enhancement Account and $302 restitution to the state police crime laboratory in Bethlehem, and submit a DNA sample to law enforcement authorities.
State police at Reading charged Smith with possessing alprazolam, cocaine, dihydrocodeine, oxycodone and a digital scale on Aug. 1, 2010, in Auburn.
Smith had alleged that his former lawyer did not act effectively during the hearing on his request to suppress evidence seized during the search of his residence.
In his opinion, Stevens wrote that Smith’s former lawyer appropriately cross-examined the witnesses against him. That cross-examination included noting inconsistencies in their testimony, and the credibility of those witnesses was for the judge who presided at the hearing, not an appellate court, to determine, according to Stevens.
“The (county) court exercised its authority as finder of fact,” he wrote.
Judges Sallie Updyke Mundy and Jack A. Panella, the other panel members, joined in Stevens’ opinion.