Court Opinion

ID: 9703885
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:11:30.287664+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:52.727204
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Jones:
I concur in the judgment of this Court but, in so doing, I wish to make plain my disagreement with certain matter in the majority opinion which I consider not only erroneous but unnecessary to the present decision.
In Margiotti Appeal, 365 Pa. 330, 341, 75 A. 2d 465, by way of dissent, I expressed my considered opinion that the Attorney General of Pennsylvania possesses no power (common law or otherwise) to supersede of his own motion an elected county district attorney in any instance. To that view, I still unwaveringly adhere. The opposite' conception^ upon which the majority opinion in MargiotU Appeal, supra, was based, had its genesis in extensively expressed but nonetheless palpably mistaken dicta in Commonwealth ex rel. Minerd v. Margiotti, 325 Pa. 17, 188 A. 524. Whether the' Attorney General of the Commonwealth possessed power to supersede of his own motion a local district attorney was in no way involved in that case. T'he supersession by the Attorney General of the local district attorney in the Minerd case was pursuant to the written request of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas of Fayette County, acting under their statutory power so to proceed: See Section 907 of The Administrative *242Code of April 9, 1929, P. L. 177, 71 PS §297, and also Commonwealth ex rel. Minerd v. Margiotti, supra, at pp. 19-20.
An elected county district attorney was wholly unknown to the common law. The sole prosecuting officer in England was the Attorney General who, from time to time and in place to place, appointed members of the bar to conduct the prosecution of criminal trials as occasion required. The office of elected county district attorney became a part of Pennsylvania’s governmental organization by the Act of May 3, 1850, P. L. 654, and was thereafter confirmed and ordained by the Constitution of 1874 (Art. XIV, Sections 1 and 2) in effect to this very day. By what process of ratiocination the idea was arrived at that the Attorney General of Pennsylvania — a purely personal appointee of the Governor — possesses a common law power to supersede of his own motion a statutorily created and constitutionally recognized elected officer, it is utterly impossible for me to comprehend.
In any event, the whole fallacious notion, which ascribed plenary power to the Attorney General of Pennsylvania by virtue of the common law, in respect of elected county district attorneys, was effectively repudiated by the legislature in 1939. The year before, in an effort to give statutory effect to what had been gratuitously opined in Commonwealth ex rel. Minerd v. Margiotti, supra, the General Assembly, in special session, passed the Act of July 30, 1938, P. L. 17 (Act No. 3) entitled, “An Act Defining the relative powers of the Attorney General and of district attorneys in investigations or proceedings in the criminal courts. . . .” The Act was at once brought to this court for construction. And, two months later (October 3, 1938), this court held (see Dauphin County Grand Jury Investigation Proceedings (No. 3), 332 Pa. 358, 2 A. 2d *243809) that the power reposed in the Attorney General by the Act of 1938 was the same power possessed by him under the common law as ascribed to him by the dicta in Commonwealth ex rel. Minerd v. Margiotti, supra. The opinion expressly so declared as follows: “It is obvious, then, that Act No. 3 merely confirms in statutory form the possession by the Attorney General of a power Which had theretofore been enjoyed by him under the usage and traditions of the common law.” Thus, what had been deemed in the Minerd case, supra, as a common law power of the Attorney General with respect to his right to supersede elected district attorneys became by the Act of 1938 a part of the statute law of the State. But (and this is of paramount importance), at the very next session of the General Assembly, the Act of 1938 was “repealed absolutely” by the Act of March 20, 1939, P. L. 8 (being Act No. 7). So, what of the common law had, for a very brief period, been statutorily adopted was, by positive and unmistakable legislative fiat, deliberately denounced as being any part of the law of this State.
The erroneous conception with respect to the power of the Attorney General over elected district attorneys, which first crept into the jurisprudence of this State in 1936 by way of patent dicta, should be'laid at rest, once and for all, and not reiterated from time to time.
It is all the more regrettable that, in the present instance, the majority opinion repeats the quotations (which originally emanated from the Minerd case), as support for the action of the Attorney General in this case, when what the Attorney General actually did here was merely to comply, as he was bound to do, with the request of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas of Berks County, acting pursuant to the authority conferred upon them by Section 907 of The Administrative Code of 1929, supra. The majority opinion itself im*244plicitly so recognizes wherein it states that — “The Attorney General was requested by the entire Common Pleas Court of Berks County to investigate these alleged crimes. Moreover, the District Attorney of Berks County voluntarily agreed that the Attorney General should conduct the prosecutions in their entirety, and the Attorney General did actually conduct them with the cooperation of the District Attorney.”
Such was the lawful badge of the Attorney General’s authority which he rightly exercised in this case; and, for that reason, I concur in the judgment of this court.