Nolle Prosequi - Notable Cases

Notable Cases

• The 1902 Peasenhall Murder in Suffolk in England.
• In 1924, Connecticut prosecutor Homer Stille Cummings dismissed charges against Harold Israel, a vagrant accused of murdering a popular priest in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Cummings demolished the evidence his own office had compiled against Israel in a 90-minute courtroom presentation. The case became the basis of the 1947 film Boomerang!.
• In 1925, prosecutors elected to dismiss murder charges against the remaining ten defendants in the famous case of People vs. Ossian Sweet. It involved a black family that had defended its home against a white mob. They were defended by attorney Clarence Darrow, who was retained by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The trial was presided over by Detroit Recorder's Court Judge Frank Murphy, who went on to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. After an initial mistrial, Henry Sweet (Ossian's brother who admitted he fired the shot) was acquitted by a jury on grounds of self defense; the dismissals of the charges against the ten remaining defendants followed.
• In 1957 John Bodkin Adams, who worked in Eastbourne, England, was tried for the murders of two elderly widows, Edith Alice Morrell and Gertrude Hullett. When he was found not guilty of killing the former, Attorney-General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller controversially entered a nolle prosequi regarding the latter charge. Not only was there seemingly little reason to enter it (Adams was not suffering from ill health), the Hullett charge was deemed to be the stronger of the two cases. Lord Justice Patrick Devlin, the presiding judge, in his post-trial book termed this "an abuse of power". Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannam of Scotland Yard, the chief investigator, suspected political interference, and Home Office pathologist Francis Camps suspected Adams of killing 163 patients.
• In 2004, rape charges against basketball player Kobe Bryant were dropped after the complainant refused to testify.
• In 2011, as a result of his reported death, charges against Osama bin Laden were dropped with the filing of a nolle prosequi in a Manhattan federal court by the U.S. Department of Justice.