Com. ex rel. Specter v. Freed
| Decision Date | 14 March 1967 |
| Citation | 228 A.2d 382,424 Pa. 508 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania ex rel. District Attorney Arlen SPECTER v. Magistrate M. Phillip FREED, Appellant. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
I. Finkelstein, Philadelphia, for appellant.
Charles W. Sweeney, Edward R. Becker, Philadelphia, for Board of Magistrates, amicus curiae.
Ferdinand P. Schoettle, Jr., Philadelphia, for Crime Commission of Philadelphia, Inc.
Alan J. Davis, Gordon Gelfond, Asst. Dist. Attys., Arlen Specter Dist. Atty., Philadelphia, for appellee, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Peter Hearn, Aaron D. Blumberg, Philadelphia, for amici curiae Greater Philadelphia Movement & Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia, Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz Philadelphia, of counsel.
Before BELL, C.J., and MUSMANNO, JONES, COHEN, EAGEN O'BRIEN and ROBERTS, JJ.
M. Phillip Freed, a magistrate of the City of Philadelphia, appeals from the order of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County requiring him to comply with a subpoena issued by Arlen Specter, District Attorney of Philadelphia. The subpoena was issued by the district attorney in the course of an investigation by his office into whether Philadelphia magistrates were violating certain state statutes, including those imposing criminal sanctions for failure to make proper entries in the dockets of magistrates court. [1] Magistrate Freed was directed by the subpoena to appear in the office of the district attorney and to bring with him certain official magisterial records.
Simply stated, the position of Magistrate Freed is that he is not required to comply with the subpoena served upon him, because the district attorney is not empowered to issue subpoenas to magistrates. [2] The district attorney quite properly makes no claim that he is invested with such power by the explicit provision of any statute or by virtue of common law, see Commonwealth ex rel. Margiotti v. Orsini, 368 Pa. 259, 81 A.2d 891 (1951); his sole contention is that section 8--409 of the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter invests him with the subpoena power. [3]
As the decided cases in this area suggest, the question of the effect of the adoption of the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, related statutes and constitutional amendments on offices which, like that of district attorney, were not prior thereto associated with municipal government of Philadelphia, is fraught with difficulty and dissent. [4] Notwithstanding these problems we conclude that the order of the court below must be reversed. In essence, our conclusion arises from the view that the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter does not affect the manner in which the district attorney shall discharge the functions and duties of his office; we have arrived at this view because we believe that neither the Constitution nor the statutes of this Commonwealth have ever granted Philadelphia or any other political subdivision of Pennsylvania authority to alter or interfere with the district attorney's conduct of law enforcement activities.
Prior to 1850, investigation and prosecution of crime in Pennsylvania were exclusively the duty of the Attorney General, a Commonwealth official. In practice, that official discharged the duties imposed on him by the appointment of deputy attorneys general empowered to act as his agents within the several counties. Commonwealth ex rel. Minerd v. Margiotti, 325 Pa. 17, 188 A. 524 (1936). In 1850 the General Assembly enacted legislation transferring the duties performed by such appointed deputy attorneys general to an official elected by the voters of the county and designated 'district attorney,' Act of May 3, 1850, P.L. 654, § 1. Interestingly, the only description of the duties of district attorneys in that act was as follows:
'the officer so elected shall sign all bills of indictment, and conduct in court all criminal or other prosecutions in the name of the commonwealth, or when the state is a party, which arise in the county for which he is elected, and perform all the duties which now by law are to be performed by deputy attorney generals * * *.' 16 P.S. § 9952.
It would seem clear from this language that the only significant change accomplished by the Act of 1850 was the alteration in The manner of selecting officers to enforce state criminal laws and to act as the state's legal representative in each county. There can be no doubt, especially in light of the decisions of this Court that the Attorney General of the Commonwealth may supersede any district attorney, [5] that the essentially state-character of criminal law enforcement was not affected.
Article XIV, Section 1 of the Constitution of 1874, P.S., designated district attorneys, along with several other officials, 'county officers.' [6] Despite this designation, the essentially state-character of the duties and functions of the district attorney's office and the manner in which they were to be discharged was not affected. An examination of the entire language of Article XIV, as it stood at the time of its adoption, shows that it was concerned solely with the election and compensation of the various 'county officers' named in section 1. Not one word of the article as originally written concerns the functions or duties of district attorney or any other so-called county officer therein mentioned.
On April 21, 1949 the General Assembly adopted the First Class City Home Rule Act. Act of April 21, 1949, P.L. 665, 53 P.S. §§ 13101--13116, 13131, 13133. Germane to the instant question was the following language of section 17 (53 P.S. § 13131) of the act:
(Emphasis supplied.)
as well as the following language from section 11 (53 P.S. § 13111) of the act:
(Emphasis supplied.)
It is clear from an examination of the quoted language that the changes authorized by the First Class City Home Rule Act were restricted to matters affecting local and municipal government. Nowhere is there any intimation that changes in the performance of state functions, which as we have seen the district attorney performs, were authorized. Indeed, nowhere in the First Class City Home Rule Act is there even a reference to the power of the city to affect 'county officers' as the district attorney was designated in Article XIV, Section 1 of the Constitution. Therefore, as far as this legislation is concerned, the General Assembly in no way disturbed pre-existing laws regarding the nature of district attorneys' functions and duties or the powers of local government with regard to them.
On November 6, 1951, Article XIV of the Constitution was amended by the addition of section 8. That section pertinently provided as follows:
'(1) In Philadelphia all county offices are hereby abolished, and The city shall henceforth perform all functions of county government within its area through officers selected in such manner as may be provided by law.
'(2) Local and special laws, regulating the affairs of the city of Philadelphia and creating offices or prescribing the powers and duties of officers of the city of Philadelphia, shall be valid notwithstanding the provisions of section seven of article three of this Constitution.
'(3) All laws applicable to the county of Philadelphia shall apply to the city of Philadelphia.
'(7) Upon adoption of this amendment all county officers shall become officers of the city of Philadelphia, and, until the General Assembly shall otherwise provide, shall continue to perform their duties and be elected, appointed, compensated and organized in such manner as may be provided by the provisions of this Constitution and the laws of the Commonwealth in effect at the time this amendment became effective, but such officers serving when this amendment becomes effective shall be permitted to complete their terms.' (Emphasis supplied.)
In this case, an attempt has been made to draw from this language the conclusion that the district attorney is a 'city officer' for purposes of giving him the subpoena powers created under section 8--409 of the Charter. We believe such a result is not warranted because nothing either in the language of Article XIV, Section 8 or the cases decided under it suggests that the city or its electors were thereby empowered to alter the functions, duties or powers of the offices in question.
The language of Article XIV, Section 8, for instance, indicates nothing touching the powers, duties and functions of the district attorney. The phrases abolishing county offices and stating the 'city shall henceforth perform all functions of county government' certainly do not have this effect. For, while the district...
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