Opinion ID: 2550075
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Denial of Appellant's motion to strike the attorney general's assumption of the prosecution at the request of the District Attorney of Bradford County

Text: Appellant next contends that the attorney general's assumption of the prosecution of his case was not authorized by 71 P.S. § 732-205(a)(3) of the Commonwealth's Attorney's Act which provides: § 732-205. Criminal prosecutions (a) Prosecutions.The Attorney General shall have the power to prosecute in any county criminal court the following cases:    (3) Upon the request of a district attorney who lacks the resources to conduct an adequate investigation or the prosecution of the criminal case or matter or who represents that there is the potential for an actual or apparent conflict of interest on the part of the district attorney or his office.    71 P.S. § 732-205(a)(3). In his letter to the attorney general, former District Attorney Downs averred he was requesting the attorney general conduct the prosecution under this statute due to both inadequate resources and an actual or apparent conflict of interest on his part. Trial Court Opinion, 5/27/2005, at 3 (quoting Downs Letter, at 1). As noted, supra, Appellant filed a pretrial motion to remove the attorney general asserting that the attorney general lacked authority to prosecute the case under 71 P.S. § 732-205(a)(3), and the trial court conducted a hearing on this motion on May 9, 2005 at which former District Attorney Downs testified. To justify his intervention, the attorney general relied on this testimony, as well as the matters expressed in former District Attorney Downs' letter to the attorney general, which Downs reaffirmed in their entirety at the hearing as correct factual representations, and an accurate accounting of his personal feelings as they existed at the time the letter was sent. The trial court ruled that the attorney general's assumption of the prosecution was proper under 71 P.S. § 732-205(a)(3) and expressly found that, with the exception of his claim that his inappropriate anger at the Sheriff created a conflict of interest, all of former District Attorney Downs' other assertions in his letter to the Office of the Attorney Generalthat he had inadequate resources to prosecute the case, and a potential conflict of interest were credible and valid. Trial Court Opinion, 5/27/2005, at 10. Appellant principally focuses his present challenge on these twin findings of the trial court claiming that the evidence does not support by a preponderance of the evidence the attorney general's involvement in this case. [36] It is now firmly established in this Commonwealth that the powers of the attorney general are strictly limited and are solely a `matter of legislative designation and enumeration.' Commonwealth v. Mulholland, 549 Pa. 634, 655, 702 A.2d 1027, 1037 (1997). Thus, the attorney general may intervene in criminal prosecutions only in accordance with provisions enumerated by the legislature. Id. Since the attorney general's intervention in this case was based on 71 P.S. § 732-205, under the plain language of this statutory provision a request for the attorney general to conduct the prosecution must flow from either a lack of resources, either to investigate or prosecute, or a potential conflict of interest. Commonwealth v. Khorey, 521 Pa. 1, 19, 555 A.2d 100, 109 (1989). As we further opined in Khorey, when an appellate court reviews the findings of fact of a trial court regarding whether these statutory requirements have been met, it should not lightly reverse those findings. 521 Pa. at 20, 555 A.2d at 110. Thus, we will only overturn a trial court's decision finding the attorney general's intervention proper under this section if it has abused its discretion. Id. At the hearing on Appellant's motion, former District Attorney Downs testified that though he was a part-time district attorney, and paid as such, he always worked as a full-time district attorney and did not have an outside legal practice. N.T. Hearing, 5/9/05, at 22. At the time of the hearing, his entire staff consisted of two full-time assistants and one part-time assistant who solely handled juvenile cases, in addition to one county detective, two secretaries, a file clerk, and a victim witness coordinator. Id. Former District Attorney Downs and his two assistants were responsible for handling an overall criminal caseload of 1,500 cases per year, an amount the trial judge, a seasoned jurist, deemed considerable for a 6th class county with two judges. Trial Court Opinion, 5/27/2005, at 5, 8. Former District Attorney Downs and his assistants would also attend every preliminary hearing held in Bradford County which, because it did not have a central court system, necessitated travel by the district attorney and his staff to the individual magistrate's offices where the hearings were held. Trial Court Opinion, 5/27/2005, at 3 (quoting Downs Letter, at 2). Former District Attorney Downs noted that because Bradford County has the second largest geographical area of Pennsylvania's 67 counties the amount of time spent travelling to these hearings was considerable. Id. Additionally, former District Attorney Downs indicated that, at the time of the hearing on Appellant's motion, he was awaiting the commencement of another homicide case, and there were two additional suspicious deaths involving a shooting and a fire that his office was investigating and would shortly be making a charging decision with respect thereto. Further, he averred in his letter that he was dealing with numerous other cases involving the manufacture and use of methamphetamine and the attendant violence it created. Id. We conclude that all of these facts amply supported the trial court's finding that former District Attorney Downs' assertion that he lacked sufficient resources to investigate and prosecute a case of this magnitude and complexity was credible and valid. [37] Appellant alternatively argues that [t]here was no testimony that funds would not be in the budget in this matter for the prosecution of this case by the District Attorney of Bradford County, Appellant's Brief at 28, and cites to the case of Yost v. McKnight, 865 A.2d 979 (Pa.Cmwlth.2005) as establishing that a district attorney has the authority to hire a special assistant district attorney in capital murder cases if the money exists within his budget to do so. While we agree that Yost stands for this proposition, the record here indicates that, unlike in Yost, former District Attorney Downs did not have the option of hiring a special assistant district attorney or any other extra personnel to help him prosecute this case. He testified that he had only approximately $20,000 allocated in his yearly budget which was designated for payment of outside experts, and he related that he utilized this money to pay expert witnesses. N.T. Hearing, 5/9/05, at 13. He further specifically averred that he would have to use this money if he wanted to hire a special assistant district attorney. Id. Thus, he was faced with a Hobson's choice. If he elected to hire a special prosecutor, he would have to face the prospect of potentially being unable to pay for the use of expert witnesses in all of the other criminal cases he would be handling for the remainder of the year, which would leave him at a serious disadvantage in being able to fulfill his prosecutorial duties. The record, therefore, belies Appellant's suggestion that former District Attorney Downs had the budgetary flexibility to hire extra personnel in this case. Appellant presently decries former District Attorney Downs' failure to seek additional funds from the Bradford County Commissioners for prosecution of this case. However, the trial court found that the likelihood of receipt of additional monies under these circumstances to be speculative, as evidenced by the County's clear concern over the costs of the case, which was reflected in a written request from its solicitor to intervene in the case and be heard on the issue of expenditures relating to Appellant's defensea request the trial court denied. Trial Court Opinion, 5/27/05, at 8, 9 n. 2. The trial court's findings in this regard are well founded. Further, we see nothing in the plain language of 71 P.S. § 732-205(a)(3) requiring a district attorney to first make an appeal for additional appropriations, beyond those already budgeted for the operation of his or her office, before requesting the attorney general's involvement. This statute permits a request whenever a district attorney lacks resources, and this condition is surely met whenever the cost of a prosecution will exceed the bounds of a district attorney's budgetary capacity. Certainly it is within the district attorney's discretion to request additional funds be disbursed from the county treasury in such circumstances, but as an elected public official who is, by necessity, intimately involved with his or her county's budgetary process, he or she is in the best position to gauge the likelihood of success of such a request. Therefore, we will not impose a requirement under 71 P.S. § 732-205(a)(3) which our legislature has not chosen to include. We also discern no abuse of discretion in the trial court's finding that former District Attorney Downs had made sufficient averments in his letter regarding the existence of a potential conflict of interest sufficient to justify the intervention of the Office of the Attorney General under 71 P.S. § 732-205(a)(3). The trial court noted that, because former District Attorney Downs averred he was a party to the arrangements which had the investigators at the jail with [Appellant], in light of Appellant's motion to suppress the statement he made at the jail, it was not unreasonable for former District Attorney Downs to assume he might have been called as a witness. Trial Court Opinion, 5/27/05, at 6-7. Due to the nature of the statements, the trial court deemed the request for recusal on this basis to have been prudent and certainly not an ethically inappropriate thing to do. Id. After review of the record we find no basis to disturb this determination since, under these circumstances, there was a significant chance that the conduct of the prosecution could be disrupted by the district attorney being called as a witness, which would, in turn, implicate his ability to prosecute the case, see Pa.R.P.C. 3.7(a) (providing that an attorney who knows that he or she is likely to be called as a necessary witness in a pending trial is not permitted to act as an advocate in that trial). It was indeed prudent to eliminate the prospect of such disruption, and its attendant consequences, before trial commenced. The record further reflects that former District Attorney Downs had represented other additional facts in his letter to the attorney general to establish a potential conflict of interest on his part in continuing with the prosecution of the case. In Commonwealth v. Eskridge, 529 Pa. 387, 604 A.2d 700 (1992), we took notice of the prospect for a conflict of interest any time a district attorney's professional judgment and ability to serve the public interest may be impaired by extraneous considerations. We reminded: [A] criminal prosecutor... unlike a private attorney, must exercise independent judgment in prosecuting a case and `has the responsibility of a minister of justice and not simply that of an advocate.' 529 Pa. at 390, 604 A.2d at 701 (quoting Pennsylvania Rule of Professional Conduct 3.8, Comment.) We further observed: A defendant does not have a right not to be prosecuted; he does, however, have a right to have his case reviewed by an administrator of justice with his mind on the public purpose, not by an advocate whose judgment may be blurred by subjective reasons. Eskridge 529 Pa. at 390, 604 A.2d at 701 (citing Commonwealth v. Dunlap, 233 Pa.Super. 38, 335 A.2d 364, 368 (1975) (Hoffman, J. dissenting)). Here, former District Attorney Downs properly and commendably recognized the potential that his close personal relationship with the slain deputies would cloud his professional judgment and possibly interfere with his ability to carry out of the duties of his office by compromising his ability to make critically important legal decisions regarding the conduct of this prosecution. His representations in the letter concerning this potential impairment were sufficient to establish a potential conflict of interest on his part sufficient to justify the attorney general's intervention under 71 P.S. § 732-205(a)(3). Finally, we note our agreement with the trial court that Appellant's suggestion that former District Attorney Downs' request for the intervention of the attorney general was somehow invalidated because it was made over four and a half months after the homicides occurred is unavailing. The plain language of 71 P.S. § 732-205(a)(3) places no time limits on when a request for the attorney general's intervention must be made. Under the terms of this statutory provision, the attorney general's intervention may be requested by the district attorney for lack of resources or the representation of a conflict of interest at any time during the course of a prosecution in a county criminal court. See 71 P.S. § 732-205(a) (The Attorney General shall have the power to prosecute in any county criminal court....).