Court Opinion

ID: 9752124
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:37:49.7306+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:08.083422
License: Public Domain

CRAIG, President Judge,
dissenting.
As the majority opinion states, the board’s preliminary objections contend that (1) this action is within this court’s appellate jurisdiction, and that (2) the board properly detained petitioner pending the disposition of new criminal charges.
1. Jurisdiction
Judicial Code section 768(a), 42 Pa.C.S. § 763(a), provides in relevant part as follows:
Commonwealth Court shall have exclusive jurisdiction of appeals from final orders of government agencies in the following cases:
(1) All appeals from Commonwealth agencies under Sub-chapter A of Chapter 7 of Title 2 ... and including ... any ... Commonwealth agency having statewide jurisdiction. (Emphasis added.)
Section 761(a) of the Code, 42 Pa.C.S. § 761(a), which relates to this court’s original jurisdiction, reads as follows:
*40The Commonwealth Court shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions or proceedings:
(1) Against the Commonwealth government, including any officer thereof, acting in his official capacity, except:
(i) actions or proceedings in the nature of applications for a writ of habeas corpus or post-conviction relief not ancillary to proceedings within the appellate jurisdiction of the court;
The board clearly is a “Commonwealth agency having statewide jurisdiction.” Hence, this court does have appellate jurisdiction over detainer challenges under section 763 of the Code, 42 Pa.C.S. § 763, if the action taken by the board in detaining the petitioner constitutes a final order. However, the court is in agreement that we have original jurisdiction over detainer challenges because board detainer decisions do not constitute final orders.1
The board may detain a prisoner who is paroled and then later arrested on new criminal charges pursuant to 37 Pa.Code § 71.3(1), which provides:
A parolee may be detained on a Board warrant pending disposition of a criminal charge following the occurrence of one of the following:
(i) A district justice has conducted a criminal preliminary hearing and concluded that there is a prima facie case against the parolee.
(ii) The parolee waives a criminal preliminary hearing and is held for court.
(iii) The parolee is convicted of a crime before a judge of the Philadelphia Municipal Court or a district justice.
*41When the board detains a parolee pursuant to 37 Pa.Code § 71.3(1), the board will not conduct a parole revocation hearing until after the resolution of the new criminal charges. See 37 Pa.Code § 71.3(2). If the parolee is convicted, the board has 120 days to hold a revocation hearing. 37 Pa.Code § 71.4(1). The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has held that parole revocation orders are final orders within this court’s appellate jurisdiction, Bronson v. Commonwealth Board of Probation and Parole, 491 Pa. 549, 421 A.2d 1021 (1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 1050, 101 S.Ct. 1771, 68 L.Ed.2d 247 (1981). Accordingly, detainers are properly characterized as preliminary steps taken by the board in the parole revocation process and do not constitute final orders.
Our decision in Ryles v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, 41 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 337, 399 A.2d 151 (1979), supports the view that detainer challenges are within this court’s original jurisdiction. In Ryles, the board lodged a detainer against a prisoner who had been released on parole and was later arrested on new criminal charges. The court treated Ryles’ “Motion to Have Parole Reinstated” as a petition for review addressed to this court’s original jurisdiction. Although the court in that case referred to a detainer as a “final action”, 41 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. at 338, 399 A.2d at 151, the phrase “final action”, as used by the court in Ryles, is not synonymous with the phrase “final order” as used in § 763 of the Judicial Code.
Furthermore, in Bellochio v. Board of Probation and Parole, 126 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 419, 559 A.2d 1024 (1989), this court, noting that there was no authority to assume appellate jurisdiction over a petition for review challenging a detainer, treated the petition as within this court’s original jurisdiction pursuant to section 761 of the Judicial Code, 42 Pa.C.S. § 761.
In support of its contention that detainers fall within this court’s appellate jurisdiction, the board cites Kline v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, No. 1417 C.D.1991, an action pending before this court. Although this court initially addressed the detainer challenge in Kline as within the court’s appellate jurisdiction, that treatment was because of a clerical *42mistake. After the court corrected the mistake, the court addressed the detainer challenge as within this court’s original jurisdiction.
The board argues that the petitioner’s detainer challenge is an action in mandamus and that such an action is not the proper method for challenging a detainer. “[M]andamus is an extraordinary writ which will only lie to compel official performance of a ministerial act or mandatory duty where there is a clear legal right in the plaintiff, a corresponding duty in the defendant, and a want of any other appropriate remedy.” Pennsylvania Dental Association v. Commonwealth Insurance Department, 512 Pa. 217, 227, 516 A.2d 647, 652, petition for allowance of appeal denied, 512 Pa. 234, 516 A.2d 656 (1986). However, the petitioner brought this action under this court’s original jurisdiction pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S. § 761(a), without reference to mandamus, seeking a hearing before this court to determine the validity of the board’s action.
2. Failure to State a Cause of Action
The board also contends that Kester’s petition fails to state a cause of action for which relief may be granted.
Although Kester has framed his petition in very broad terms and included many irrelevant allegations, the averments do assert that he did not violate any of the conditions of his parole and that the board is illegally detaining him.
In this case, the petitioner has alleged that the board has lodged a detainer against him based upon new criminal charges, which he avers resulted in a mistrial. The board argues that they have properly detained the petitioner under 37 Pa.Code § 71.3.
As noted above, that regulation allows the board to detain parolees pending the disposition of new criminal charges only when one of the following has occurred: (1) a finding by a district justice after a preliminary hearing that there is a prima facie case against the parolee; (2) the parolee waived a preliminary hearing and is held for court; (3) conviction of a crime at trial by a judge of the Philadelphia Municipal Court *43or a district justice; or (4) an examiner has conducted a detention hearing.
The board argues that we can infer from paragraphs III and XIV of the petition for review that either (1) a district justice has conducted a criminal preliminary hearing and concluded that there is a prima facie case against the parolee or (2) the parolee waived a criminal preliminary hearing and is being held for court, because the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure require one of those two things to occur before a person is tried for a crime.
Those pleadings state:
III.
The District Attorney is a party, because of its involvement in not communicating the fact that this petitioner’s trial ended in a mistrial and the mistrial was caused by the Commonwealth and is now being appealed to the Superior Court for dismissal on the grounds of Double Jeopardy and prosecutor misconduct intentionally resulting in the added confinement of the petitioner.
XIV.
The petitioner is not guilty of any wrong doing and has not been adjudicated guilty of any offense by the Court. Rather the trial ended in a mistrial at the cause to be made note, infected by an inexperienced District Attorney, and done so deliberately, when her case was in shambles. The record so reflects this. (Emphasis in original.)
Admittedly, the petitioner can succeed in challenging the detainer against him only if he is able to prove that the board has detained him without satisfying one of the above criteria. Although the petitioner’s pleadings suggest that one of these criteria may have been satisfied, based on an inference from the petitioner’s averments that he has proceeded to trial on the new charges, this court should not assume that the requirements of 37 Pa.Code § 71.3 have been met. The board’s preliminary objections should be overruled.

. Although this application, to release the petitioner from a detainer, can be characterized as a proceeding in the nature of habeas corpus, neither the petitioner nor the board has questioned this court’s jurisdiction on that ground, apparently because 42 Pa.C.S. § 761(a), as quoted above, expressly provides that our jurisdiction does extend to applications for a writ of habeas corpus where the matter is "ancillary to proceedings within the appellate jurisdiction” of the court, and this detainer under 37 Pa.Code § 71.3(1) is certainly ancillary to the board’s parole revocation proceedings, which are exclusively subject to review in our appellate jurisdiction.