Individuals cannot press charges, only a prosecutor vested with the authority of the state may file charges. This is an extremely common misconception largely generated from popular media. Individuals can report a crime to the police, cooperate with prosecutors, and sue privately.
It is a common misconception that the victim can "press charges" against someone for a criminal matter. This is entirely false.
Only the prosecuting attorney (someone employed by the government) gets to choose when and how someone is charged with a crime. The victim has no say whatsoever in the matter, and indeed the DA can charge someone even when the victim doesn't want them to, or decline to prosecute even when the victim requests it.
A little off-topic but the idea that a private party can request (or not) to “press charges” is kind of a TV/Hollywood trope, isn’t it? It’s not some button that a victim of a crime can go and “press” to activate a trial. Prosecutors decide whether or not to pursue criminal cases.
The whole "pressing charges" thing is mostly overplayed in popular culture. Police departments may certainly have a process for filing a complaint, and prosecutors may certainly prefer to have a cooperative complaining witness, but the putative victim of a crime has no formal role in the criminal justice process. A crime is considered an offense against the state, and the state is the party that decides who and whether to prosecute.
You are confusing pressing charges and indictment. Pressing charges just means you accuse somebody of a crime and “press” the prosecutor to indict them. So the state does have the ultimate say on who is prosecuted, but that doesn’t mean you can’t press charges.
That's not true. The decision about whether to press charges is up to the prosecutor. The prosecutor will often take the victim's wishes into account when deciding what to do, but they aren't required to.
Depending on the jurisdiction, strictly speaking it's not up to the victim to pursue charges. The prosecutor can bring charges whether the victim wants to or not.
In practice if the victim doesn't want to testify there's usually no way to get a conviction so it won't be prosecuted. But the decision lies with the prosecutor.
That's not actually true. The prosecutor and police can still come after you for most charges. For example, if you end up killing the other person, the prosecutor will still come after you for murder. The reason they tend to ignore lesser crimes if someone doesn't want to press charges is because they don't want to waste their time if nobody else is interested in taking it to court, and usually they need the witness testimony from the victim (although not always, and they could hold them as a material witness if they wanted to).
After you have brought charges it becomes up to the prosecutor. You can't take them back. If it was possible for someone to take back charges, it would be trivial for the suspect to have the charges dropped by threatening the victim.
In spite of what you see on TV, it's not up to a victim to decide whether or not to press criminal charges in the end. That's up to the attorney general usually.
Many states in the US allow private citizens to start prosecutions that then get passed to a public prosecutor; some also allow private citizens to attempt to convince a magistrate to issue arrest warrants. There are also a few that allow private citizens to try a complete case (ex: Virginia). It’s rare, and not allowed for federal cases, but is a thing in the US.
Yes, in most cases it is the prosecutor's discretion whether to bring a case to a grand jury, but that isn't what pressing charges is. See Merriam Webster's definition[0].
https://www.thsh.com/criminal-justice-insider/as-seen-on-tv-...
reply