Prosecutorial justifications for sexual assault case rejection: Guarding the "gateway to justice"

The decision to charge is a critical stage in the processing of sexual assa ult cases, as many cases do not proceed beyond this stage. Frohmann (1991) examined prosecutorial justifications for case rejection and concluded that prosecutors construct typifications of credible victims and rare relevant behavior in deciding whether to file charges in sexual assault cases. We us e data on 1997 sexual battery cases cleared by arrest in Miami, Florida, as well as information gleaned from interviews with a sample of the attorneys who handled these cases to replicate and extend Frohmann's work. Although our findings are consistent with Frohmann's assertion that charging decisio ns primarily reflect the prosecutor's assessment of the likelihood of convi ction, they also suggest that this assessment is based on factors other tha n typifications of rare and rare victims. In a substantial number of the ca ses examined for this study, the decision to reject charges could be traced to the victim's failure to appear for a prefile interview, refusal to coop erate in the prosecution of the case, or admission that the charges were fa bricated. We also found that the decision to file charges was based on a co mbination of case and victim characteristics, hut that cases involving a vi ctim and suspect who were acquainted. related, or intimate partners were mo re likely than those involving a victim and suspect who were strangers to b e prosecuted. We conclude that prosecutors' charging decisions are guided b y a set of "focal concerns" (Steffenmeiser, et, al. 1998) that revolve arou nd reducing uncertainty and sent ring convictions and that incorporate beli efs about real rapes and legitimate victims.