82 Pa. 405 | Pa. | 1876
delivered the opinion of the court, October 23d 1876.
Indictments in these two cases were preferred before the grand jury at the June Term of the Court of Quarter Sessions in 1875, and were returned “ ignoramus,” with a direction that the county should pay the costs. New indictments were sent to the next grand ju\’y at the September sessions 1875, and a “ true bill ” was returned in each case. Before the June Term Rowand, the defendant, had been held to'bail on informations made against him, and he was indicted in September for the offences charged in those informations. Expressing grave doubt of the legality of the proceeding, and emphatically condemning the practice which sustained.it, the Court of Quarter Sessions overruled the motion to quash the indictments.
But principles have been long settled which require that the action of the district attorney in these cases shall be sustained.. The Act of the 3d of May 1850, providing for the election of this officer, makes it his duty to “ 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 attorneys general.” A defendant discharged from custody after the return of “ignoramus” to an indictment against him, remains still subject to prosecution in any of the forms to which the attorney general or his deputy before the Act of 1850 could resort. “ If a man be committed for a crime, and no bill be preferred against him, or it be thrown out by the grand jury, so that he is discharged by proclamation, he is still liable to be indicted. * * * And so, too, a discharge from a former indictment upon payment of costs, in consequence of the refusal of the prosecutor to prosecute further, is no bar: Whart. Cr. Law, sect. 544, referring to 2 Hale 243; Commonwealth v. Miller, 2 Ash. 61, and State v. Blackwell, 9 Ala. 79. The modes of proceeding in the initiation of criminal prosecutions were stated with great fulness and accuracy by Judge King in a charge to a grand jury of Philadelphia in 1845, quoted at length in a note to sect.
It is thus ajoparent that upon considerations involving the maintenance of the public security it has been found necessary to lodge this extraordinary and delicate authority somewhere, and it is apparent also that it has been lodged in the prosecuting officer of the Commonwealth. It is to be exercised, in the ordinary case, under the supervision of the proper court of criminal jurisdiction, and in all cases its exercise is subject to their revision and approval. The action of the officer and the court could be brought here for purposes of review only when the abuse of their discretion should be found to have been both manifest and flagrant. Cases can be conceived where the ends of justice would be defeated by the delay and publicity of a motion in open court for leave to send up an indictment, and in such cases it would be the duty of the prosecuting
While, however, the possession of .this exceptional power by prosecuting officers cannot be denied, its employment can only be justified by some pressing and adequate necessity. When exercised without such necessity it is -the duty of the Quarter Sessions to set the officer’s act aside. Where a defendant has been once discharged on a return of “ ignoramus,” a new bill sent up without a fresh hearing, and without the leave of the court,, should be promptly quashed in the absence of affirmative proof that the course taken was required to meet some grave emergency, or to provide for some urgent public need. In the present instance, the Court of Quarter Sessions must be assumed to have approved the action of the district attorney. The defendant has been tried, convicted and sentenced on the bills sent to the second grand jury. If there was wrong it was one which the Quarter Sessions could alone redress. This court is powerless to interpose.
Judgment affirmed.