# In Re Dauphin County Fourth Investigating Grand Jury

> Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · December 10, 2007 · 596 Pa. 378

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9706228

## Case

- **Full name:** In Re DAUPHIN COUNTY FOURTH INVESTIGATING GRAND JURY. Petition of Louis A. DeNaples and Mount Airy # 1, LLC.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
- **Decided:** December 10, 2007
- **Citations:** 596 Pa. 378; 943 A.2d 929; 2007 Pa. LEXIS 2591
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Cappy
- **Judges:** Baldwin, Cappy, Baer, Castille, Eakin, Fitzgerald, Saylor
- **Cited by:** 16 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9706228

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining King’s Bench jurisdiction, unlike extraordinary jurisdiction, “allows the Court to exercise power of general superintendency over inferior tribunals even when no matter is pending before a lower court”

## Opinion text

Chief Justice CAPPY,
concurring.
I reluctantly join in the result reached by the Majority, which concludes that the explicit language of Section 1517(d) of the Pennsylvania Race Horse Development and Gaming Act, 4 Pa.C.S. § 1101 et seg.(“the Act”), provides for county district attorneys to share concurrent authority with the Attorney General in investigating and prosecuting criminal violations of the Act. I write separately, however, to point out the perils that arise from such statutory edict, particularly the carte blanche self-elevation of the Dauphin County District Attorney as a super-prosecutor of purported gaming violations *396 merely due to the geographical circumstance that he presides in the county in which the politically-charged gaming legislation was enacted. By subpoenaing documents relating to Petitioners’ gaming application and license, the District Attorney is attempting to unravel the extensive proceedings that have been conducted by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board after an exhaustive investigative and adjudicatory process and which were affirmed by this Court in Pocono Manor Investors, L.P. v. Gaming Control Board, 592 Pa. 625 , 927 A.2d 209 (2007). The Legislature surely could not have contemplated such a distorted application of Section 1517 of the Act.
A more prudent scheme would designate the Office of Attorney General as the sole prosecutorial body to uniformly enforce the comprehensive statutory scheme for gaming license approval. In my view, the General Assembly envisioned such an approach and merely intended for Section 1517 to afford local district attorneys the authority to carry out their traditional role of investigating and prosecuting crimes that may occur on the premises of a gaming facility. However, because my view is not supported by the Legislature’s use of broad statutory language in Section 1517, I am constrained to join in the Majority’s result. 1
Justice BALDWIN joins this concurring opinion.
. I am also deeply concerned by the Grand Jury leaks in this matter, which are obvious by simply reading the newspaper. This smacks of a personal quest of someone either seeking personal aggrandizement or a vendetta against a family or an ethnic group. Whatever the motive, it is intolerable that what goes on in a confidential grand jury is published the next day by the media.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9706228. Public record. Not legal advice.