Opinion ID: 6357669
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Pre-Deprivation Process

Text: The Commonwealth opposes the affordance of any additional process. Its submissions do not recognize the concerns expressed by the courts and commentators as discussed in Part II, above. According to the Commonwealth, the right of [written] response on the part of individuals  criticized in a grand jury report will be universally sufficient to adequately protect their reputational interests as against condemnatory findings and satisfy due process norms. Brief for Appellee at 6; see also id. at 5 (The Grand Jury Act provides protection against allegedly unfair statements in a report not by suppressing them, as petitioners demand, but by allowing both sides to speak.). 16 The Commonwealth posits, on the one hand, that the grand jury system serves to give an unfiltered voice to the people. Id. at 12. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth separately downplays the impact of Report 1 and assures its judicious reception by the public, as follows: The report is not a judicial adjudication of wrongdoing, but rather the opinion of lay jurors. The public at large presumably understands that opinions may be wrong, just as accusations in a civil complaint (which is filed in court, and may be disseminated by news media) are understood to be partisan averments that are potentially false. Brief for Appellee at 18. Notably, in the following passage taken from its brief, the Commonwealth appears to display an appreciation that a grand jury report will directly impact Appellants' fundamental reputational rights: Grand jury reports do not initiate legal proceedings or deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property; instead they raise issues that the jurors, as representatives of their community, believe the public needs to consider. Sometimes, there is simply no way to do that without saying things that may affect the reputations of certain individuals. Brief for Appellee at 6 (emphasis added). 17 Along these lines, the Commonwealth acknowledges that grand jury reports -- not only as they pertain to general conditions affecting public welfare, but also insofar as they may impugn the reputations of specific persons -- will yield critical judgments by the citizenry. 18 Although we agree with the Commonwealth that Report 1 will likely impact Appellants' reputations, we differ with the government's position in other material respects. First, the right of citizens to security in their reputations is not some lesser-order precept. See supra note 17. Rather, in Pennsylvania it is a fundamental constitutional entitlement. See  PA. CONST. art. I, § 1 ; R. v. DPW, 535 Pa. at 454 , 636 A.2d at 149 . The right is established in the opening passage of the Pennsylvania Constitution's Declaration of Rights -- under the title Inherent rights of mankind -- and is couched as an indefeasible guarantee. PA. CONST. art. I, § 1. This foundational assurance of reputational security has remained substantively extant through four iterations of the state charter, dating back to our Constitution of 1790. This Court has recently stated that the Pennsylvania Constitution places reputational interests on the highest plane, that is, on the same level as those pertaining to life, liberty, and property. Am. Future Sys., Inc. , 592 Pa. at 77 n.7, 923 A.2d at 395 n.7 (emphasis added); see also Driscoll v. Corbett , 620 Pa. 494 , 514, 69 A.3d 197 , 210 (2013) (observing that life, liberty, property, and reputation are all listed together by the state charter as foundational freedoms). 19 In the context of such fundamental rights, the historical acceptance of the institution of the grand jury can go only so far in justifying the relaxation of procedural requirements for the protection of those rights. Second, our view aligns with those of the courts and commentators which have rejected the Commonwealth's premise that a state-sanctioned, judicially-supervised grand jury stands on equal footing, in terms of public perception, with individuals whom the grand jury may see fit to criticize. See supra Part II & note 14. Thus, we believe that the risk that the grand jury's pronouncements will be seen as carrying the weight of governmental and judicial authority -- and as themselves embodying the voice of the community relative to particular findings -- is substantial. See id. ; cf. Brief for Appellants at 30-31 (characterizing the right of [written] response highlighted by the Commonwealth as a token opportunity to respond in a way that has no possibility of changing the outcome [and] is not due process worth the name). In this regard, we conclude that the lines between a grand jury investigation and an adjudication are blurred when the grand jury renders wide-scale, individualized, condemnatory findings on the order of those announced in Report 1. Third, responding to the Commonwealth's analogy between a grand jury report in the nature of Report 1 and a civil complaint, we observe that the differences are profound. The complaint contains allegations, not findings by a governmentally sanctioned body operating within the judicial sphere, upon its review of an extensive body of evidence. Moreover, the averments in a civil complaint, unlike the findings in a grand jury report, are subject to subsequent testing in the adjudicative process. In this respect and more broadly, all of the  points made by courts distinguishing indictments from presentments and reports are pertinent. See supra Part II. Fourth, and consistent with Part II of this opinion, we distinguish between a grand jury report that is designed to address general welfare concerns, but may have a collateral impact on reputational rights, and a report -- such as Report 1 -- in which a primary objective is to publicly censure the conduct of specific individuals. See Report 1, at 2 (setting out to shine a light on [the] conduct, of named predator priests). With the assistance of its legal advisor, the attorney for the Commonwealth, a grand jury setting about the latter course should apprehend that increased procedural protections are implicated in the interest of fundamental fairness. Indeed, it is difficult to understand why an attorney for the Commonwealth would not wish to present such testimony from living individuals, for the benefit of lay grand jurors who have plainly set out to find the truth and reveal it to the public. Cf. Pa.R.P.C. 3.8, Explanatory Comment (observing that prosecutors have the responsibility of a minister of justice and not simply that of an advocate). When, in unusual circumstances, reputations must be compromised by grand juries on the order of the pervasive condemnations embodied in Report 1, see Brief for Appellee at 6 (Sometimes, there is simply no [other] way ...), we find that enhanced procedural protections are plainly required. And notably, the Investigating Grand Jury Act does not restrain the attorney for the Commonwealth from implementing additional procedural protections, when a grand jury undertakes to prepare a report of the tenor and scale of Report 1. Fifth, the procedural protections provided in the Investigating Grand Jury Act are minimal relative to Report 1. As we have otherwise related, we conclude that the right of [written] response -- entailing the opportunity to possibly append a hearsay rebuttal statement to a 900-page report otherwise impugning an individual as a sexual predator or facilitator alongside more than 300 others amidst the hierarchy of a religious institution -- is not sufficiently effective. Significantly, as well, there can be no doubt that the subject matter of the report is incendiary, and therefore, the stakes for individuals reproached therein are substantially heightened. Furthermore, the supervising judge's statutory preponderance-based review may be inadequate, in the grand jury setting, to serve as a sufficient protective measure. Preponderance means the greater weight of the evidence, or evidence that tips the scales toward belief. Commonwealth v. Brown, 567 Pa. 272 , 284, 786 A.2d 961 , 968 (2001). The application of this standard is best suited to adversarial proceedings where competing litigants present evidence to be weighed by a factfinder -- indeed, the preponderance of the evidence is the general standard upon which most civil matters are resolved. See, e.g. , Sutliff v. Sutliff, 518 Pa. 378 , 385, 543 A.2d 534 , 538 (1988). Unfortunately, there is the risk that the standard can be too effortlessly satisfied in the grand jury setting, where the evidence is controlled by a single presenter -- the attorney for the Commonwealth -- free from any requirement to adduce legally competent evidence, 20 or exculpatory proofs. See supra Part II (discussing inherent limitations associated with the  grand jury regime). Such freedoms may enhance the internal functionality of grand juries, but we reiterate that they also represent a limitation upon its truth-finding capabilities. See id. Moreover, from all appearances, the supervising judge may have performed his preponderance-of-the-evidence review on a report-wide basis, rather than discretely determining if the grand jurors' specific criticism of each individual appellant was supported by a preponderance of the evidence. See June 5 Opinion, at 5. But that procedure for judicial review can afford no assurance of any protection for individual reputational rights, when the safeguard can be overwhelmed by the tenor and scale of a grand jury report such as Report 1. 21 For these reasons, we find that preponderance-of-the-evidence review by a supervising judge, as provided in the Investigating Grand Jury Act, is not a sufficient safeguard to obviate the necessity to provide Appellants an opportunity to respond to the grand jury's criticisms in a meaningful way. Finally, replying to the Commonwealth's position that the Investigating Grand Jury Act leaves no room for pre-deprivation processes above and beyond what are provided in the enactment, we observe that that the statute is subordinate to the Constitution. See, e.g. , In re Subpoena on Judicial Inquiry & Review Bd., 512 Pa. 496 , 507, 517 A.2d 949 , 955 (1986) (In the framework of our governmental system it is clear that the constitutional rule of law is more fundamental and must prevail.). To the extent that the minimal procedures explicitly provided by the enactment are insufficient to protect Appellants' fundamental constitutional rights, the statute might be deemed unconstitutional as applied. 22 Thus, the question becomes whether the statute may be interpreted as affording sufficient process, consistent with its design, or at least as not foreclosing a remedial pre-deprivation process. See 1 Pa.C.S. § 1922(3) (embodying the presumption [t]hat the General Assembly does not intend to violate the Constitution of the United States or of this Commonwealth). And, accordingly, Appellants' argument regarding the availability of additional pre-deprivation process, which satisfies the constitutional requirement of due process, must be considered by the Court, if the portions of the report critical of their conduct ultimately are to be released to the public. 23