Piscanio Appeal’s Empirical Analysis
1975
Citation profile
44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 46 later decisions — most recently April 2008 · most notably 304 Pa. Super. 297 - Commonwealth v. Malloy (1982), 2005 Pa. Super. 211 - In Re Private Criminal Complaint of Wilson (2005)
44 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on 12 Cal. 3d 323 - Gordon v. Justice Court · Commonwealth v. Ragone · Commonwealth v. DiPasquale · 231 Pa. Super. 508 - Irrera v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority · Commonwealth ex rel. Specter v. Freed
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 46 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(a) When the affiant is not a law enforcement officer. . . the complaint shall be submitted to an attorney for the Commonwealth, who shall approve or disapprove without unreasonable delay. (b) If the attorney for the Commonwealth ..... (2) Disapproves the complaint, the attorney shall state the reasons on the complaint form and return it to the affiant. Thereafter the affiant may file the complaint with a judge of a Court of Common Pleas for approval or disapproval; . . .”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““Whether to charge a person with a criminal offense depends upon the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. This discretionary power of the district attorney in determining whether prosecution shall be commenced or maintained may well depend on matters of policy wholly separate and apart from the existence or nonexistence of probable cause. For this reason, the courts have been wary of interfering with or attempting to supervise the district attorney in the exercise of his discretion in controlling criminal prosecutions, (citations omitted) “In Piscanio Appeal, 235 Pa. Super. 490, 494-96 , 344 A.2d 658, 660-62 (1975), this court said: Tlie power granted the district attorney under Rule 133(B) to approve or disapprove private criminal complaints is consistent with the authority regularly exercised by that office in deciding whether to initiate or to discontinue prosecutions.... In addition, Rule 133(B) protects the interest of the private complainant by allowing for the submission of the disapproved complaint to a judge of a court of common pleas. The judge’s independent review of the complaint checks and balances the district attorney’s decision and further hedges against possibility of error.... The (private) prosecutor ... even as a victim ... has no legitimate interest, other than as a member of the general public, in seeing a violator of the laws brought to justice by the Commonwealth and punished for his misdeeds. If a private prosecutor feels individually harmed his reme”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“A district Attorney has general and widely recognized power to conduct criminal litigation and prosecutions on behalf of the Commonwealth, and to decide whether and when to prosecute, and whether and when to continue or discontinue a case.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.