Court Opinion

ID: 9758104
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:11:52.921124+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:47.042891
License: Public Domain

*604DEL SOLE, Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
In Commonwealth v. Malloy, 304 Pa.Super. 297, 450 A.2d 689 (1982), this Court held that a victim-complainant has no standing to appeal the dismissal of private criminal complaints. I do not believe the fact that the Malloy case had proceeded to the preliminary hearing stage before dismissal makes any difference in Appellant’s standing to appeal to this Court.
Pa.R.Crim.P. 133(B) gives a victim-complainant the right to seek approval from the Court of Common Pleas of a private criminal complaint which has been disapproved by the district attorney. However, that rule of court does not make the victim-complainant a party to the action.
Criminal prosecutions are not to settle private grievances, but are to rectify the injury done to the Commonwealth. The individual who is the victim of a crime only has recourse to a civil action for damages. Commonwealth v. Malloy, supra, 304 Pa.Superior Ct. at 301, 450 A.2d at 691. The court in Malloy cited with approval the language of the United States Supreme Court in Linda R.S. v. Richard C. & Texas, et al., 410 U.S. 614, 619, 93 S.Ct. 1146, 1149, 35 L.Ed.2d 536 (1973), that "... a citizen lacks standing to contest the policies of the prosecuting attorney when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution ... (I)n American jurisprudence at least, a private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of another”.
The state is the party-plaintiff in a criminal prosecution. The victim-complainant is not a party to the proceeding. The victim acts only as a prosecuting witness, even in the case of a private criminal complaint. Commonwealth v. Malloy, supra, 304 Pa.Super. at 306, 450 A.2d at 689. Therefore, the victim-complainant has no standing to appeal from the disapproval of private criminal complaints.
I would quash the appeal.