Opinion ID: 2161627
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Trial Court's Responsibility

Text: It may very well be that the district attorney did make an investigation of appellant's complaint, or that even if he did not, he had sufficient reasons for not approving the complaint. The difficulty is that we do not know the basis of the district attorney's refusal to approve the complaint. The reason we do not know is because the trial court misconceived its function on appellant's appeal from the district attorney's refusal to approve the complaint  a misconception given precedential force by the majority's opinion. The issue before the trial court was whether in refusing to approve the complaint the district attorney had grossly abused his discretion. See In re Wood, 333 Pa.Super. 597, 602, 482 A.2d 1033, 1036 (1984), quoting Commonwealth v. Eisemann, 276 Pa.Super. 543, 545-47, 419 A.2d 591, 592-93 (1980); see also Commonwealth v. Williamson, 298 Pa.Super. 81, 444 A.2d 669 (1982). The trial court, however, looked only to see whether the complaint alleged probable cause. So far as the record discloses at least, the trial court conducted no hearing; thus, in support of its order, the trial court stated: [C]areful consideration of the affidavit discloses that it is insufficient because it consists solely of generalities without specifics. The complaint likewise displays a complete failure to aver any facts supporting the alleged criminal activity. From this it is evident that the trial court regarded the issue of abuse of discretion and the issue of probable cause as the same issue under different names  in other words, that the court believed that if a private criminal complaint fails to aver facts that if accepted, establish probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, then a district attorney may, for that reason alone, disapprove the complaint. This is the position now adopted by the majority. The issues of probable cause and abuse of discretion, however, are not the same. As I have attempted to explain, even though a complaint does not allege probable cause, still, the district attorney may have had a responsibility to investigate the complaint. Therefore, in my view, among the questions the trial court must ask, on appeal from a district attorney's refusal to approve a private complaint, are: Does the complaint, although not alleging probable cause, nevertheless allege sufficient facts to state the offense committed by the accused, and the general nature and time and place of the offense? Commonwealth v. Wilkinson, supra . If the complaint does allege such facts, did the district attorney investigate? If he did, was his decision not to prosecute a gross abuse of discretion? And finally, if the district attorney did not investigate, was his decision not to prosecute without making an investigation a gross abuse of discretion. I do not mean to suggest that the trial court must conform to a particular procedure. Whether after hearing or upon affidavit, however, the court should make a determination on each of these questions. Neither do I mean to suggest that the trial court is to establish rigid guidelines by which a district attorney's conduct is to be judged. It is beyond dispute that a district attorney has broad discretion, Commonwealth v. Eisemann, 308 Pa.Super. 16, 20, 453 A.2d 1045, (1982), and it is emphatically not a reviewing court's function either to second-guess or to dictate a district attorney's decisions. It is equally true, however, that the court does have the power, and therefore the responsibility, to assess the district attorney's conduct against the standard of gross abuse of discretion. Commonwealth v. Eisemann, supra . Obviously, what constitutes a gross abuse of discretion cannot be stated by a simple formula. Everything will depend on the particular facts of the case and the district's attorney's articulated reasons for acting, or failing to act, in the particular circumstances. For example, a court may find a gross abuse of discretion in a district attorney's pattern of discriminatory prosecution, see, e.g., Yick v. Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886); United States v. Falk, 479 F.2d 616, 618 (7th Cir. 1973); People v. Utica Daw's Drug Co., 16 App.Div.2d 12, 225 N.Y.S.2d 128, 4 A.L.R.3d 393 (1962); or in retaliatory prosecutions based on personal or other impermissible motives, see, e.g., Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1924); United States v. Steele, 461 F.2d 1148, 1152 (9th Cir. 1972). Similarly, a district attorney may be found to have grossly abused his discretion for his blanket refusal to prosecute for violations of a particular statute, Nader v. Saxbe, 497 F.2d 676, 679 (D.C.Cir. 1974), or for refusing to prosecute solely because the accused is a public official, Commonwealth v. Komatowski, 347 Pa. 445, 450, 32 A.2d at 905, 908 (1943). The fact that it is difficult to define gross abuse of discretion does not, however, relieve the court from the obligation to undertake a definition. As the court in Medical Committee for Human Rights v. SEC, 432 F.2d 659, 673 (D.C.Cir. 1970), stated: The decisions of this court have never allowed the phrase `prosecutorial discretion' to be treated as a magical incantation which automatically provides a shield for arbitrariness. See also Nader v. Saxbe, supra at 680 n. 19 (The law has long recognized the distinction between judicial usurpation of discretionary authority and judicial review of the statutory and constitutional limits to that authority.). See generally Vorenberg, Decent Restraint of Prosecutorial Power, 94 Harv.L.Rev. 1521 (1981) (noting the evils of broad discretion and calling for increased judicial review of prosecutorial decisions); Note, Reviewability of Prosecutorial Discretion: Failure to Prosecute, 75 Colum.L.Rev. 130, 143 (1975) (expanding the courts' scope of review of prosecutor's decisions is not tantamount to telling the prosecutor how to conduct his office). I should therefore remand to the trial court with instructions to determine whether in refusing to approve appellant's complaint, the district attorney grossly abused his discretion. CIRILLO, Judge, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. The majority's conclusion that appellant has standing to pursue prosecution is based solely upon a perceived distinction between this case and Commonwealth v. Malloy, 304 Pa.Super. 297, 450 A.2d 689 (1982), a distinction which in reality is of no consequence. In Malloy, we held that a private criminal complainant has no standing to appeal absent the district attorney's consent. It so happened that in Malloy, the district attorney originally approved the complaint, but when it was subsequently dismissed by the court for failure to make out a prima facie case, the district attorney chose not to appeal that decision. It was procedurally unique in the sense that it did not involve the more typical situation wherein, after the district attorney dismisses the complaint, it is filed by the complainant for judicial review. By the majority's analysis, Malloy's conclusion that appellant, as victim or witness, lacks `party' status in this criminal prosecution [and thus] has no standing to appeal, only applies to cases bearing the same procedural posture. Read in any light, Malloy was never intended to be limited in this way. Regardless of any court action on a district attorney's disposition of a private complaint, the fact remains that prosecutions are sought to rectify injuries to society. The aggrieved party, if one exists, is the Commonwealth. The victim of the alleged crime may pursue a civil remedy. Admittedly, the issue in Malloy was phrased to embrace the procedural posture of the case: whether a victim/complainant has standing to appeal, without the consent of the district attorney, a judicial determination dismissing his complaint. However, the balance of the opinion contains nothing to support the conclusion that a different procedural setting would dictate a contrary result. Indeed, we summarized the law of various jurisdictions only to support our very general conclusion that victims have no standing to appeal, period: [A] citizen lacks standing to contest the policies of the prosecuting attorney when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution . . . in American jurisprudence at least, a private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of another. Id., 304 Pa.Superior Ct. at 305, 450 A.2d at 693, quoting Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614, 619, 93 S.Ct. 1146, 1149, 35 L.Ed.2d 536, 541 (1973). Clearly, if Malloy stands for one principle, it is that the district attorney has exclusive authority to determine whether prosecution is called for in a given case. This authority is tempered only by the complainant's right to have the decision reviewed by a court of common pleas so any abuse of discretion by the district attorney may be discovered. Such review will be important to a complainant when the district attorney has in fact abused his discretion, but nonetheless, the court of common pleas' determination is the end of the line for the complainant on the criminal side. The majority seems to attach great weight to the fact that the court of common pleas in Malloy went so far as to establish that no prima facie case existed, whereas the reviewing court in this case found only that the complaint did not show probable cause, i.e., the sufficiency of the case itself was not considered. In my view, this indicates only that the Malloy complainant had a greater appealable interest; at least there the district attorney found enough probable cause to initiate prosecution. In any event, the complainant's interest stretches only to the point of securing a judicial determination that the district attorney did not abuse his discretion in disposing of the complaint. The same reasoning compels me to the conclusion that In re Wood, 333 Pa.Super. 597, 482 A.2d 1033 (1984), was wrongly decided, it too being based upon a false premise. The Wood court properly stated Malloy's holding that private complainants lack standing, but then by a tortured analysis found such standing anyway. In Wood, the district attorney chose not to pursue prosecution, whereupon the complainant filed his private complaint with the court of common pleas for review. Our Court reasoned that since complainant himself filed the complaint, he was a party below and could therefore take an appeal. The result is nothing less than a procedural absurdity: the Malloy -type complainant, who does not have to file the complaint himself because the Commonwealth initially chose to prosecute, must hope that the district attorney chooses to appeal if the case is subsequently dismissed; the Wood -type complainant, in contrast, has the right to appeal simply because the district attorney's decision not to prosecute forced the complainant to file the complaint with the court on his own. In short, the right to appeal hinges on nothing more than the mere happenstance of the order in which the events unfold. A complainant is only a party below as concerns the judicial review he himself initiated, which is separate and distinct from subsequent criminal prosecution no matter how the caption reads. In the actual prosecution, the complainant will never be anything more than a prosecuting witness, irrespective of his right to seek judicial review of the district attorney's disposition of the complaint. In my view, when the case is Commonwealth versus The Accused, two parties may take an appeal: the Commonwealth, and the accused. Accordingly, I dissent. ROWLEY, J., joins.