Wikipedia Deep Dive

Nolle prosequi

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The Legal Magic Words That Make Criminal Cases Disappear

In 1982, a London courtroom witnessed one of the strangest moments in British legal history. A prosecution had been brought against a theatrical production called "The Romans in Britain" for allegedly showing obscene content on stage. The key evidence? A witness who claimed to have seen an erect penis during a male rape scene. When the defense demonstrated that what the witness had actually seen was an actor's thumb, the case collapsed spectacularly. The Attorney General stepped in and uttered two Latin words that made the whole prosecution vanish: nolle prosequi.

Those two words—meaning "to be unwilling to pursue"—represent one of the most powerful and least understood tools in the criminal justice system. With this declaration, a prosecutor can simply walk away from a case, leaving the defendant in a peculiar limbo: neither convicted nor truly cleared.

What Exactly Is Nolle Prosequi?

At its core, nolle prosequi (often shortened to "nol pros" or just "nolle") is a prosecutor's formal announcement that they're dropping a criminal case. Think of it as the prosecution raising a white flag—but a temporary one that can potentially be picked up again later.

This is fundamentally different from an acquittal, where a judge or jury declares the defendant not guilty. An acquittal is permanent and absolute. Once you're acquitted of a crime, double jeopardy protections kick in, and you can never be charged with that same offense again. Not so with nolle prosequi.

When a prosecutor enters a nolle prosequi, the case simply... stops. The defendant walks free, but there's an asterisk hanging over their head. Technically, the prosecution could refile charges later. In practice, this rarely happens—but the possibility lingers like an uninvited guest who refuses to leave the party.

Why Would Prosecutors Use This Power?

Imagine you're a district attorney. You've charged someone with murder based on compelling eyewitness testimony. Then your star witness dies in an unrelated car accident. Or maybe the witness simply refuses to cooperate anymore. Suddenly, your airtight case has sprung leaks everywhere.

You have several options, none of them ideal. You could take the weakened case to trial and probably lose. You could ask the judge to dismiss the case entirely. Or you could enter a nolle prosequi—essentially saying, "I'm not pursuing this right now, but I'm not admitting defeat either."

The reasons for entering nolle prosequi are varied:

Key witnesses become unavailable or refuse to testify
Evidence turns out to be fatally flawed or insufficient
The prosecutor develops serious doubts about the defendant's guilt
New evidence proves the defendant's innocence
The defendant dies (prosecuting corpses is generally considered pointless)
Federal charges have been filed for the same conduct, making state prosecution redundant

That last scenario is more common than you might think. When federal prosecutors swoop in and secure a lengthy conviction, state prosecutors often enter a nolle prosequi on their parallel case. Why spend taxpayer money proving what's already been proven?

The Critical Distinction: When Can It Be Used?

Timing matters enormously. A nolle prosequi is typically entered after someone has been formally charged (indicted) but before the case reaches a final verdict. Once a jury has rendered its judgment—guilty or not guilty—the window for nolle prosequi slams shut.

This creates an interesting strategic dimension. In Australia, courts have cracked down on prosecutors who try to use nolle prosequi as a tactical retreat. If a trial is going badly and the prosecution suddenly enters a nolle prosequi, hoping to get a do-over with a different jury, Australian courts view this as an abuse of process. You don't get to flee a sinking ship and then demand a new ship.

The Americans handle this differently. Under Rule 48 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, prosecutors must ask the court's permission before entering a nolle prosequi. This represents a deliberate departure from the old common law tradition, where prosecutors could dismiss cases unilaterally. The rule exists to prevent prosecutors from using dismissals as currency—offering to make cases disappear in exchange for favors or under political pressure.

The British System: A Power Reserved for the Powerful

In England and Wales, only the Attorney General can enter a nolle prosequi. This isn't some obscure technicality—the Attorney General is a senior government minister, accountable to Parliament rather than the courts. When the Attorney General speaks these Latin words, no judge can overrule the decision.

This concentration of power has led to controversial moments. In the Al-Yamamah arms deal scandal, investigators were probing allegations that BAE Systems had bribed Saudi Arabian officials to secure defense contracts worth billions of pounds. The investigation was progressing when the Saudi government made threats: cooperate less on counterterrorism efforts if the investigation continued.

The Director of the Serious Fraud Office initially resisted pressure to shut down the investigation. So did the Attorney General. But when Prime Minister Tony Blair weighed in—himself under pressure from Riyadh—the investigation was halted. The Director's reasoning? He knew the Attorney General could simply enter a nolle prosequi to kill any prosecution anyway. Better to stop investigating than to build a case that would be torpedoed at the last moment.

Public interest organizations challenged this decision and initially won in the lower courts. But the House of Lords ultimately sided with the Director, reasoning that his decision was "reasonable and lawful" given the political realities. The case illustrated how nolle prosequi can function as a threat held in reserve, shaping decisions before it's ever formally invoked.

Across the Commonwealth: Variations on a Theme

Different countries have adapted this legal tool to their own systems, sometimes with surprising results.

Canada's Year-Long Pause Button

Canada doesn't use the term nolle prosequi. Instead, they have something called a "Crown-directed stay of charges." It works similarly, but with an interesting twist: the prosecution is suspended for exactly one year. If that year passes without the prosecution being revived, the charges are dismissed entirely. In practice, stayed prosecutions almost never restart—but that one-year deadline creates more certainty than the open-ended ambiguity of traditional nolle prosequi.

Ireland's Widespread Use

In the Republic of Ireland, the Director of Public Prosecutions can enter a nolle prosequi, and they do so frequently. Here's a striking statistic: about one-quarter of all rape indictments in 2013 ended with a nolle prosequi. That's not because prosecutors were casually abandoning cases—rather, it reflects the practical difficulties of prosecuting sexual assault when evidence is limited and convictions are hard to secure.

Irish law takes an interesting philosophical stance. Since an accused person is presumed innocent until convicted, a nolle prosequi is essentially treated as equivalent to innocence. The person walks away with their presumption of innocence intact, never having been proven guilty of anything.

Nigeria's Constitutional Codification

Nigeria's 1999 Constitution explicitly grants the federal Attorney General power to discontinue criminal proceedings at any stage before final judgment. This gives statutory backing to what had been common practice since the colonial era. Notably, the Attorney General doesn't need the court's permission—a significant difference from the American approach.

During Nigeria's Second Republic (1979-1983), state attorneys-general also had this power and reportedly abused it in several notorious cases. That authority has since been restricted to the federal level, suggesting that concentrated power is sometimes preferable to distributed power when it comes to making prosecutions disappear.

South Africa's Private Prosecution Pathway

South Africa offers a unique twist. When the National Prosecuting Authority decides not to proceed with a case, private citizens with a direct interest can bring their own criminal prosecution. But first, they must obtain a nolle prosequi certificate from the Director of Public Prosecutions—essentially official confirmation that the state has no interest in the case. The private prosecutor then has three months to bring their case.

This system creates a safety valve. If prosecutors are corrupt, politically compromised, or simply negligent, victims aren't left without recourse. They can become prosecutors themselves, provided the state formally steps aside.

Famous Cases: When Nolle Prosequi Changed History

Jefferson Davis and the Treason That Wasn't

After the American Civil War, the president of the defeated Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was charged with treason—one of the most serious crimes imaginable. He spent two years in prison awaiting trial. Then in 1868, President Andrew Johnson issued a general amnesty for former Confederates. The treason charges were dropped via nolle prosequi, and Davis lived out his days a free man, never having faced judgment for leading a rebellion that cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Dr. John Bodkin Adams: The Serial Killer Who Walked Free?

In 1957, Dr. John Bodkin Adams stood trial for murdering Edith Alice Morrell, an elderly widow in the English seaside town of Eastbourne. He was also indicted—but not yet tried—for murdering another widow, Gertrude Hullett. When the jury acquitted him of Morrell's murder, Attorney General Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller entered a nolle prosequi on the Hullett charge.

The trial judge, Justice Devlin, was furious. In his post-trial book, he called the nolle prosequi "an abuse of process, which left an innocent man under the suspicion that there might have been something in the talk of mass murder after all." Modern historians believe Adams may have hastened the deaths of as many as 160 patients. He was never held accountable for any of them.

Ossian Sweet and the Defense of Home

In 1925, Ossian Sweet, a Black physician in Detroit, moved his family into a house in a white neighborhood. A mob gathered. Shots were fired from inside the house, killing one man in the crowd. Eleven people, including Sweet and his brother Henry, were charged with murder.

The defendants were represented by Clarence Darrow, the most famous lawyer in America, retained by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (now known simply as the NAACP). The first trial ended in a mistrial. At the second trial, Henry Sweet—who admitted firing the fatal shot—was acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

After that acquittal, prosecutors entered nolle prosequi on charges against the remaining ten defendants. They recognized that if Henry's shot was justified self-defense, there was no point in prosecuting the others. The case became a landmark moment in civil rights history and the ongoing struggle for Black Americans to defend their homes against white violence.

Kobe Bryant and the Reluctant Witness

In 2004, basketball star Kobe Bryant faced rape charges in Colorado. The case dominated sports headlines for months. Then the complainant refused to testify, and prosecutors entered a nolle prosequi. Bryant went on to continue his basketball career, eventually winning two more championships before his death in a helicopter crash in 2020. The case raised difficult questions about how celebrity status affects criminal proceedings and what happens when accusers change their minds.

Osama bin Laden: Death Ends Prosecution

In 2011, after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, pending criminal charges against the al-Qaeda leader in American courts were dropped. This might seem obvious—you can't prosecute a dead person—but it required formal action nonetheless. Nolle prosequi provided the mechanism for tidying up the legal loose ends left by the world's most famous targeted killing.

The Literary Life of Nolle Prosequi

Legal Latin has a way of migrating into popular culture, and nolle prosequi is no exception. In the Jeeves novels by P.G. Wodehouse, the perpetually befuddled Bertie Wooster uses "enter a nolle prosequi" as an elaborate way of refusing requests. When his fearsome aunts or scheming friends try to rope him into some scheme, Bertie announces that he's "entering a nolle prosequi on the whole affair"—a characteristically absurd deployment of legal terminology by a young man who went to all the right schools without absorbing much education.

Wodehouse's choice wasn't random. He was writing for an audience of educated Britons in the early twentieth century, people who would recognize the phrase and appreciate the joke of a feckless aristocrat treating social obligations like criminal prosecutions he could simply abandon.

The Tension at the Heart of Nolle Prosequi

This legal tool embodies a fundamental tension in criminal justice. On one hand, we want prosecutors to have flexibility. Not every case should go to trial. Circumstances change. Evidence weakens. Sometimes dropping charges is the right thing to do.

On the other hand, the power to make criminal cases disappear is extraordinary. It can be used to protect the innocent—or to shield the guilty. It can respond to genuine evidentiary problems—or to political pressure. It can serve justice—or obstruct it.

The various systems around the world represent different attempts to balance these concerns. America requires judicial approval. Britain vests the power in a single political appointee. Canada imposes a time limit. South Africa allows private citizens to step in when the state steps out.

None of these approaches is perfect. Each reflects a society's particular anxieties about prosecutorial power and its particular faith in different institutions to check that power. What works in Dublin might fail in Detroit. What's appropriate in Lagos might be problematic in London.

Living Under the Shadow

For defendants, nolle prosequi creates a peculiar form of limbo. You're not guilty—that's never been established. But you're not innocent either, not in the formal sense of having been tried and acquitted. The charges simply hover, like a sword of Damocles that might or might not fall.

In practice, prosecutors rarely revive cases after entering nolle prosequi. A British study found no known case of this happening in the century before 1957. But "rarely" isn't "never," and that uncertainty can shape lives. Job applications ask about arrests and charges, not just convictions. The stigma of having been charged with a crime persists even when the charges go away.

This is why the Irish approach—treating nolle prosequi as equivalent to innocence—has a certain philosophical elegance. If the state can't or won't prove you guilty, you should be treated as what you legally are: an innocent person. The American approach, by contrast, leaves defendants in perpetual uncertainty, their cases closed but never quite resolved.

The Words That Matter

Legal systems communicate through ritual and language. When a prosecutor stands in court and says "nolle prosequi," they're invoking centuries of legal tradition. The Latin phrase connects modern courtrooms to Roman law, through English common law, across oceans to former colonies, and into the present day.

But beneath the Latin lies a simple human reality. Someone in authority has decided not to pursue a case. That decision might be principled or corrupt, wise or foolish, just or unjust. The Latin doesn't tell us which. It only tells us that the prosecution has chosen, for now, to stop.

In a world where criminal justice systems hold enormous power over individual lives, that choice—and who gets to make it, and why, and with what oversight—matters immensely. Nolle prosequi is just two words. But like many things in law, those two words carry the weight of centuries and the stakes of entire lives.