Opinion ID: 1972943
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Klinger Should Also Be Discharged

Text: The Opinion of Mr. Justice Nix fails to disclose the appalling conduct on the part of the District Attorney of Perry County in bringing the present perjury charges against Klinger. Immediately after the Perry County jury acquitted Klinger of murder, the district attorney publicly stated his disagreement with the jury verdict and announced that he intended to investigate the possibility of retrying Klinger on the murder charge as well as lodging perjury charges against Klinger on the basis of his testimony at the murder trial. When the Court of Common Pleas of Perry County learned of the prosecutor's intention to file perjury charges, the court requested the prosecuting attorney to submit the perjury case to the Commonwealth's Attorney General for an impartial determination of whether the charges ought to be filed. Deputy Attorney General Bernard L. Siegel reviewed the evidence and recommended that Klinger not be prosecuted. Nonetheless, the prosecutor sought another opinion from the York County District Attorney who, after review, supported the view of the Perry County District Attorney. Acting on this support, and in total disregard of the recommendation of the Attorney General, the district attorney filed perjury and conspiracy to commit perjury charges against Klinger. Included in the charges which the majority leaves standing are the allegations that: (Count II) Klinger lied when he stated that he saw and waved to two guys on Lamb's Gap Road after leaving Miller's Gap; (Count V) Klinger lied when he stated that one Nielson was the first person to whom he related the events of Miller's Gap; and (Count VI) Klinger lied when he detailed the route taken from Camp Hill to the mountain. The Supreme Court of the United States long has held the view that a prosecutor is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a particular and very definite sense the servant of the law. . . . Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88, 55 S.Ct. 629, 633, 79 L.Ed. 1314 (1935), quoted in Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 384 n. 12, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 2908 n.12, 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979). The District Attorney's conduct here falls far below the Supreme Court's standard. His conduct is clearly vindictive and designed to obtain vengeance against Klinger despite the jury's verdict of acquittal on the substantive charges. Indeed, a clearer record of bad faith prosecution could not be established. Here, after openly admitting and publicizing his personal dissatisfaction with the jury's verdict of not guilty on the substantive charge of murder, the Perry County District Attorney has proceeded to bring perjury charges against Klinger in disregard of the opinion of the office of the Attorney General, the highest law enforcement officer of this Commonwealth, that prosecution is unwarranted. The charges brought are among the most frivolous imaginable, relating to wholly collateral matters in Klinger's testimony such as Klinger's statement that he saw two persons standing on a road the morning of the alleged killing. This testimony can in no way be viewed as material for purposes of a perjury prosecution. See 18 Pa.C.S. § 4902(a) (false testimony must be material). As Judge Hoffman observed in his dissenting opinion in the Superior Court, prosecution on this charge relating to whether Klinger saw and waved to two persons on a road is childish, to say the least. It must be clear that the jury which acquitted Klinger on the substantive charge of murder heard and favorably evaluated Klinger's version of the events on the morning of the alleged killing. As Mr. Justice Rehnquist has stated in expressing the opinion of the Supreme Court: [T]he law attaches particular significance to an acquittal. To permit a second trial after an acquittal, however mistaken the acquittal may have been, would present an unacceptably high risk that the Government, with its vastly superior resources, might wear down the defendant so that `even though innocent, he may be found guilty.' Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 188, 78 S.Ct. 221, 223 (1957). United States v. Scott, 437 U.S. 82, 91, 98 S.Ct. 2187, 2194, 57 L.Ed.2d 65 (1978). See also Taylor v. Redman, 500 F.Supp. 453 (D.C., Del. 1980). There is no reason now for the Opinion of Mr. Justice Nix to permit circumvention of the jury's deliberation and conclusion by way of the present frivolous charges, well characterized by Mr. Justice Flaherty as a vindictive prosecution motivated by vengeance. Indeed, a federal district court recently observed: [I]t would be very unfair to let the Government do indirectly what it cannot [do] directly . . . . A government must, above all, be fair to its citizens. United States v. Reed, 496 F.Supp. 865 (D.C., E.D. Ark. 1980) (barring perjury prosecution based on grand jury testimony denying bribe eight to ten years ago, beyond statute of limitations). It is fundamental to the integrity of the American system of fair and equal administration of criminal justice that Klinger be granted the same relief as Hude. O'BRIEN, C.J., joins this Opinion.