The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania addressed an interesting point of Pennsylvania law. In Pennsylvania, the law permits private citizens to file criminal complaints against other persons, but, before proceeding, the private criminal complaint must be submitted to a Commonwealth Attorney (prosecutor) for approval or disapproval (with the assumption that the CA does an investigation into the allegations). If the CA disapproves the complaint, the private citizen may then seek review of this disapproval from the Court of Common Pleas. This is what happened in the case at hand. A Father submitted a private criminal complaint against a Mother to the CA alleging interference with custody of and concealment of the whereabouts of their children. The CA disapproved of the complaint, so the Father sought review in the Court, which ordered that it may proceed. The case ultimately ended up before the PA Supreme Court, which concluded that a Court can only overturn a CA’s disapproval decision “if the private complainant [here, the Father] demonstrates that the disapproval decision amounted to bad faith, occurred due to fraud, or was unconstitutional.” The PA Supreme Court applied this standard of review and concluded that the Father did not meet the burden, so the PA Supreme Court reversed the lower court, letting the CA’s disapproval stand.

In this particular case, the Father alleged that the Mother orchestrated a parental child abduction of their children to Iraq in or about August 2017. Between October 2018 and May 2019, the Father obtained various family court orders in Pennsylvania giving him sole legal and physical custody, directing the Mother to appear in court, directing a bench warrant be issued for her failure to appear, and holding her in civil contempt. The Father also alleged that the Mother’s uncles and other third parties made threats on his life in connection with his attempts to seek the children’s return to the United States. The Father sought help from the U.S. Embassy, diplomatic security, the U.S. State Department, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s office in the ED of PA, and various other agencies, law enforcement, and others. He contended that filing criminal charges against the Mother and the subsequent issuance of an arrest warrant would assist him in his efforts to locate the children and seek their return to the United States (his understanding is that this would permit an INTERPOL Red Notice, permit revocation of the Mother’s U.S. passport, and limit her additional travel to another country).

The underlying reasons why the prosecutor’s office disapproved the Father’s complaint included: (1) generally, they do not approve of private complaints alleging a felony, (2) they need to take caution in criminalizing actions of estranged parents involved in a custody dispute, (3) the Father has alternative remedies in civil court and through federal authorities, (4) there is insufficient probable cause that the Mother committed the alleged crime (particularly since the complaint focuses on her uncles), and (5) the county’s law enforcement lacks the resources to conduct the investigation.