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The Pennsylvania Superior Court last week dismissed a petition that challenged the conviction and lengthy state sentence imposed on a Bedford County man who was convicted of almost 400 charges of child sexual abuse.
The charges against Richard Max Crawford III, 54, go back to the 1990s when Crawford began abusing a 7-year-old girl.
That abuse continued until the girl was 12 in 1996, according to the Superior Court decision.
When the victim was 19, she revealed the abuse to a boyfriend, who then told her mother, and, at the urging of her family, she contacted state police to report the prolonged abuse she had suffered.
The police convinced her to wear a wire and discuss the incidents with Crawford.
Their conversation was recorded and at that point Trooper Joseph Kovel asked Crawford to come to the state police barracks.
When questioned about the woman's allegations, "Crawford confessed that he had engaged in sexual contact with the (victim) over the course of many years," according to the Superior Court summary of the case.
Crawford admitted in a written statement that he had contact with the youngster twice a month during a five-year period.
On March 30, 2007, Bedford County Judge Daniel Howsware sentenced Crawford on 392 offenses that included child rape, indecent assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and statutory sexual assault among other charges.
Crawford was also deemed to be a sexually violent predator.
Crawford's subsequent appeals before the Pennsylvania Superior Court were dismissed, and he then filed an appeal with the U.S. District Court in Johnstown, and finally took his case to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of appeals.
Crawford, before the U.S. Circuit Court, contended his due process and Sixth Amendment rights had been violated by police for "charging him with numerous, undifferentiated counts of the same offenses, rather than separate, specific and identifiable incidents of child sexual abuse."
That argument was rejected by both the U.S. District Court and the 3rd Circuit.
In his latest challenge, Crawford, acting as his own attorney, presented 12 issues touching on just about every phase of his case, including: the statute of limitations, the trial judge's instructions to the jury, the legality of the charging documents, flawed wiretap transcripts and the legality of the wiretap, statements to the jury by the prosecutor and a charge that his attorney was ineffective.
Bedford County Judge Daniel S. Ling dismissed Crawford's petition as untimely.
Ling pointed out a post conviction petition like Crawford's had to be filed within one year of the initial closing of his case.
His case was initially closed on March 9, 2010, which mean had until March 9, 2011, to file his post-conviction petition.
His petition was not filed until April 17, 2018.
The Superior Court panel that reviewed his case (judges John T. Bender, Deborah A. Kunselman and James G. Colins) reported there are exceptions to the one-year rule, and they noted that Crawford argued that several issues he raised -- the legality of the charging documents, the alleged illegal sentence he received because it involved mandatories later found to be unconstitutional and his designation as a sexually violent predator -- were in conformity with the statutory exceptions to the timeliness rule.
This circumstance, Crawford argued, means all of his issues should be reviewed.
The three-judge panel rejected his argument.
For instance, the panel stated that even if the charging documents were wrong, that issue "failed to meet an exception to the PCRA's time-bar."
As to the alleged unconstitutionality of his sentence, the panel found that Ling "correctly determined this claim was not subject to any timeliness exception."
And when it came to Crawford's challenge to the court finding him a sexually violent predator (which requires him to register as sex offender under present registration laws), the panel noted that Crawford was found guilty of rape, which it concluded, "has always been a registrable offense."
Crawford is incarcerated in the State Correctional Institution at Benner Township, Centre County.