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967 So. 2d 437

Docket No. 4D07-1003.

State v. Leon

STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Jorge Jesus LEON, Appellee.

District Court of Appeal of Florida

Decided October 31, 2007.

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 2007-10-31

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“[W]e agree that reversal is required because the trial court's action in dismissing the case was an abuse of discretion and constituted an improper infringement upon the State's discretion to prosecute.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including State v. Bonnett

Relies on State v. Wheeler

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2007-10-31

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently October 2020

4 state decisions

20200720102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Bill McCollum, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Georgina Jimenez-Orosa, Senior Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

¶2Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and James W. McIntire, Assistant Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

¶3PER CURIAM.

¶4The State charged the defendant, Jorge Jesus Leon, with bigamy in violation of section 826.01, Florida Statutes. Although another assistant state attorney was in attendance, when the filing attorney for the State failed to appear as ordered by the trial court, the trial court sua sponte entered an order of dismissal dismissing the case without prejudice and concluding that the State wasted the court's time and acted in bad faith in initiating the prosecution. The State appeals the order of dismissal. The defendant concedes error and we agree that reversal is required because the trial court's action in dismissing the case was an abuse of discretion and constituted an improper infringement upon the State's discretion to prosecute. State v. Wheeler,745 So.2d 1094, 1096 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999). Therefore, we reverse and remand for reinstatement of the bigamy charge against the defendant.

¶5Reversed and Remanded.

¶6GUNTHER, WARNER and GROSS, JJ., concur.

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