Say you charged somebody with murder. 1 day before the trial the only witness decides they don’t want to testify, and you have no case. If you proceed, you will lose the trial and you won’t be able to charge him with murder again. But he was arrested running towards the mexican border, and if the charges are dismissed, he will clearly flee and never be heard from again. And you think you can convince the witness to testify within a week.
To stop him from fleeing the country, could you re-arrest him immediately on the same charges he was just dismissed on, to hope that the witness will be convinced to testify by the next arraignment?
Double jeopardy does not apply because the trial had not begun.
Moderator Action
Welcome to the SDMB, bomberswarm2.
You are asking an awful lot of hypothetical legal questions all at once. It’s probably best if you slow down the pace a bit and not flood the board with too many posts that are all similar. If you are going to do more of these, it might also be better to place them all in one thread.
I am closing this for now. If you want to ask it again in a few days, go ahead. Just slow down a bit.
Thread closed.
Moderator Note
Thread re-opened due to interest in it, but let’s not have any more new legal hypothetical threads for at least a couple of days.
So, this is an interesting question.
As the OP correctly intuits, this does not involve double jeopardy. Jeopardy attaches to a case when the jury is sworn in, or at a bench trial the moment the judge begins hearing evidence. So double jeopardy would not bar a retrial.
Normally, the prosecution would ask for a one week continuance, since the OP’s hypothetical specifies that the witness can be convinced to testify in that time period. That doesn’t require the charges to be dismissed, and we assume that the defendant is in custody pending trial based on his flight riskiness.
But what if the trial date is at the edge of the “speedy trial” limits for the state? That would mean that there can’t be a continuance without running afoul of speedy trial statutory guarantees. (There are also speedy trial constitutional guarantees, but a one week delay is unlikely to trigger constitutional limits).
So the question is: can the government nolle pross the case and then immediately re-indict, or re-file charges, to avoid speedy trial concerns?
Allowing that could open the barn doors to abuse by corrupt or malevolent officials. Imagine this happening to one person repeatedly. Imagine the so-called witness being imaginary.
I’d imagine if they tried this more than once, assuming its legal in the first place, the judge would demand the prosecution produce the witness for the judge to interview to find out what exactly is going on, and arrest the prosecuter for contempt until the witness was made avilable to the judge. If the witness does not exist, then the prosecuter would probably be charged with false arrest and purgery. If the witness does not want to testify, tye judge would probably dismiss the case and tell the prosecuter not to charge the suspect again with the same charge until they produce evidence or a witness willing to testify to the judge.
Your imagination is wrong.
Can’t a material witness be held against his will? Not in a cell, but under police escort in a hotel or something like that?
Okay, so I’ve been watching reruns of Barney Miller recently.