Dallas County district attorney's office to start rejecting most cases that lack arrests
10:53 PM CDT on Thursday, August 14, 2008

By TIARA M. ELLIS and JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News
For decades, thousands of indicted felony suspects in Dallas County have walked away scot-free without ever having been tried for their alleged crimes.

The reason: They were never arrested in the first place.

But beginning today, the Dallas County district attorney's office plans to put a halt to that by refusing to accept most cases in which an arrest has not been made. DA officials say they will start with Dallas Police Department cases and eventually take the new policy countywide.


Details.

It can work, if applied logically. One scenario that comes to mind is a questionable allegation of sexual assault by a child. If a warrant is issued and an arrest made, then the victim recants, the defendant has been through a lot. A similar scenario may arise when the case is no-billed. Our regular practice is to present those types of cases to the grand jury or request additional investigation BEFORE arresting the defendant. That way justice is served if the indictment is returned, but at the same time the defendant does not suffer the stigma associated with an arrest if the case is no-billed or if the victim recants. Note that this practice is usually limited to local defendants. Out-of state (or even out-of-county) or transient defendants may be arrested before the case is presented to the grand jury just so we don't have to try to track them down later.

It is key for everyone to understand that there must be some system for keeping track of open cases. Otherwise, the case has simply gone cold in a different file draw (police rather than prosecutor). Police don't usually have any system that follows cold cases. Courts, on the other hand, can have cases come back up on the docket occasionally.

In addition, it is very easy for a case to get lost for expiration of the statute of limitations. Why wait until it is about to expire before indicting?