Opinion ID: 853475
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Refiling as a Tactic

Text: This Court discussed dismissal and refiling of charges as a prosecutorial tactic in Davenport v. State, 689 N.E.2d 1226 (Ind. 1997), modified on reh'g, 696 N.E.2d 870 (Ind.1998). In Davenport, the State originally charged a defendant with murder. 689 N.E.2d at 1229, 696 N.E.2d at 871. Four days before trial, the State sought to add charges of felony murder, attempted robbery, and auto theft. The prosecutor requested dismissal after he was denied permission to amend the information, and immediately refiled all four charges. Id. This Court held that [w]hile courts have allowed the State significant latitude in filing a second information, the State cannot go so far as to abuse its power and prejudice a defendant's substantial rights. 689 N.E.2d at 1230. [3] The Court in Davenport reversed the convictions on the three additional charges, restoring the defendant to his position prior to the prosecutor's efforts to avoid the court's ruling. 689 N.E.2d at 1233, 696 N.E.2d at 872. The Indiana Court of Appeals applied the principles articulated in Davenport in the factually similar case of State v. Klein, 702 N.E.2d 771 (Ind.Ct.App.1998). In Klein, the defendant faced four separate charges related to an alleged sexual assault. Id. at 772. Less than three weeks before trial, the court denied as untimely the State's motion to add a charge of attempted murder. The State dismissed the original charges and refiled all four plus attempted murder. Id. The trial court dismissed all five charges with prejudice upon the defendant's motion, as an attempt to evade the court's denial of the motion to amend. Id. at 772-73. The Court of Appeals, correctly recognizing that the dispositive fact in Davenport was an abuse of prosecutorial discretion in circumventing a court order and prejudicing the defendant's substantial rights, limited the State to its original charges. [4] Id. at 776. Although this case arose from the exclusion of evidence rather than denial of permission to add charges, the reasoning of Davenport and Klein is pertinent. In each case, the State sought to take some action (i.e., to add charges or to offer evidence of other acts of misconduct) that would require the defendant to revise his defense strategy at the eleventh hour. In each case, the trial court concluded that the State did not have a good reason for the delay or lack of notice. In each case, the court properly forbade the action as taken too late. In each case, the prosecutor sought to dodge the adverse ruling via dismissal and refiling. The equities weigh even more heavily in Johnson's favor than in either Davenport or Klein. By refiling, the State attempted not only to evade the court's ruling and get a second shot at offering 404(b) evidence, but also to subject Johnson to ten additional charges. If the State may circumvent an adverse evidentiary ruling by simply dismissing and refiling the original charge, and also punish the defendant for a successful procedural challenge by piling on additional charges, defendants will as a practical matter be unable to avail themselves of legitimate procedural rights. Here, no new evidence was discovered between the dismissal and refiling. No elements of the additional charged crimes were completed during that interim. No honest mistake or oversight occurred in the original decision to prosecute. See Cherry v. State, 275 Ind. 14, 20, 414 N.E.2d 301, 305 (1981). Based on the circumstances presented, we conclude that the State exceeded the boundaries of fair play. The prosecutor impermissibly impinged the defendant's exercise of his substantial procedural rights by dismissing and refiling to evade an adverse trial court ruling and, in the process, piling on additional charges that were unjustified by changed circumstances. Therefore, the trial court abused its discretion when it denied in total Johnson's motion to dismiss the eleven-count information.