prosecutorial-discretion
Logic or reasons for DA not bringing felony charges after an arrest warrant is issued
<p>What might lead a district attorney to decide not to bring felony charges after an arrest warrant is issued?  Are decisions not to press charges influenced by pending, unrelated felony charges in other counties - on the logic that the person will be behind bars soon anyway?  Or is the decision to bring charges always based on the likelihood of the prosecution prevailing in court? Or is the decision based on other factors?  (This question pertains to several counties in the state of Georgia, USA.) </p>

<p>People who are given discretion about the exercise of executive power (like DAs, police, Executive Officers, the President etc.) may exercise it in any manner they see fit subject to a very short list of constraints which include:</p>

<ul>
<li>the exercise of discretion must be within the limits of their legal power. </li>
<li>the must consider the things they are required by law to consider and must not consider the things they are required by law not to consider. For example, if the law requires consideration of the prospect of success then they have to consider that and if it prohibits considering race or gender then they can't consider race or gender.</li>
<li>they must (in common law jurisdictions) consider the merits of the particular case before them. That is, they cannot follow 'blanket' rules. Recent decisions in the Constitutional Court of Indonesia indicates that this may not be the case in civil law jurisdictions - the President had indicated that he would not commute death sentences of any drug offenders irrespective of the merits of the particular case and the court upheld this exercise of discretion. This would not be a proper exercise of discretion in the US or other common law jurisdictions - discretion must be exercised case by case.</li>
<li>they must exercise discretion in an unbiased and impartial manner.</li>
<li>they can't act corruptly.</li>
</ul>

<p>If a court is approached for a Writ of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandamus" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Mandamus</a> it will consider if discretion has been properly exercised and if so, it will refuse the application. If not, it will issue the writ which will require the official to properly exercise their discretion - it won't take that discretion away from them (unless they were corrupt etc. - even then, they will usually refer it to a different decision maker).</p>
