We represented a husband and wife in a case with 15 defendants. Their original attorney, like the attorneys for the other defendants, allowed the case to linger. Due to the complexity of the case and the fact that the federal prosecutors were thinking of prosecuting the case in federal court, the state prosecutor was in no hurry to deal with it. Our clients hired us to speed things up. Unfortunately, their original attorney had let the time lapse to file their State Statutory Demand for Speedy Trial, so we did the next best thing and filed a Constitutional Demand for Speedy Trial. Meanwhile, the federal prosecutors chose to prosecute some, but not all, of the defendants. Our clients where not chosen for this round of federal prosecution. When a sufficient amount of time passed without our case being brought to trial, we filed a Motion to Dismiss on behalf of our defendants. The state prosecutor dismissed its entire case as to all defendants.

Of special note is that about a year prior to us moving to dismiss, the state prosecutor moved to dead-docket the case. All of the attorneys representing the other defendants readily and enthusiastically agreed to the dead-­docket, however, we did not. We objected since once on the dead­docket, a case usually stays pending forever, and only the state prosecutor (not even the judge) can move it from the dead­-docket to the active docket. The dead­-docket is beneficial to attorneys because they no longer have to prepare for trial, but for clients, it means the case will hang over their heads for the rest of their life. A case can not be dead-­docketed over the objection of the defendant, so our objection prevented the case from being dead­-docketed. As a result of our objection, all of the other defendants benefitted, getting their cases dismissed instead of dead-docketed.