Court Opinion

ID: 9642647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 18:05:15.290609+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:50.486073
License: Public Domain

HOOD, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent for the reason that I do not understand Mann v. United States, 113 U.S.App.D.C. 27, 304 F.2d 394 (1962), to hold that all dismissals for want of prosecution, except those based on the Speedy Trial Clause of the Constitution, are automatically dismissals without prejudice. I understand that Mann, rejecting the holding in District of Columbia v. Healy, D.C.Mun.App., 160 A.2d 800 (1960), that every dismissal for want of prosecution is necessarily with prejudice, holds that such a dimissal may be without prejudice. I do not understand Mann to hold that a trial court is without power to enter such a dismissal with prejudice.
I understand Mann to hold that where a dismissal for want of prosecution is without prejudice the defendant “is entitled to know whether the sword of Damocles still hangs over him”; and that a dismissal without prejudice should be so noted in order to give the defendant “the required warning”; .and that in Mann the failure to so note the dismissal was not “fatal” because the required warning was given orally by the trial judge at time of dismissal.
In the present case the order of dismissal included no notation that it was without prejudice and the defendant was not given the required warning that he was still subj ect to prosecution under a new information. It appears to me that under the holding in Mann the dismissal here was not a dismissal •without prejudice, and therefore it was a bar to the second information.