Teenager’s Alleged Burglary Case Thrown Out After Repeated Prosecution Delay

By Alric Lindsay

A burglary charge against a 19-year-old man was dismissed in Summary Court today, July 16, 2026, after Crown Counsel from the Office of Director of Public Prosecutions arrived, once again, without a file — the third time the case had been listed and the third time it could not proceed.

The young man had answered his bail on every occasion. His attorney, Amelia Fosuhene, told the Chief Magistrate he had done everything asked of him while the prosecution had not. “[He] has been here on every single occasion,” she said. “This is not fair on the defendant. What is [he] supposed to do today?”

The charge arose from a 2024 burglary said to involve items taken from a primary school. Ms Fosuhene pointed out that it was, by any measure, an old matter that had been adjourned twice already for the very same reason — DPP Crown Counsel was not ready.

The 19-year-old man has no previous convictions; at the time of the alleged offence in 2024 he would have been about 17, which, the Chief Magistrate heard, could have placed the matter in a different court altogether.

Pressed on what had changed since the last two adjournments, the DPP Crown Counsel could offer no explanation to the Chief Magistrate. With the DPP Crown Counsel unable to present any evidence, the court brought the matter to an end. The case was dismissed.

For the defence, the outcome turned on a simple principle: a defendant cannot be left indefinitely in limbo while the state repeatedly fails to get its house in order. “You really wonder what the public interest is,” Ms Fosuhene remarked, as the file was finally closed.

A Second Case Falls The Same Way

The 19-year-old’s case was not the only one to collapse. Speaking outside court after the hearing, Ms Fosuhene said two of her matters had been dismissed for a similar underlying failure — a lack of proper disclosure by the prosecution. One was a traffic trial.

The account she gave was striking. A man who had been drinking, she said, was approached by a police officer who objected to the way his car was parked and told him to move it.

He moved the vehicle a short distance — and a second officer, waiting nearby, promptly arrested him. Ms Fosuhene suggested that the officer made the man move his car seeing that he’d been drinking, but didn’t ask him if he was fit to drive.

She said she had written to the police as early as January asking for the full picture — the communications between the officers, the 911 recording, and all of the CCTV from the area — but the material was never properly provided. Months passed. Even by the day of trial, she said, key recordings had still not been
handed over. The court, she said, accepted that a defendant should not have to keep coming back to fight the prosecution simply to obtain what the rules already require it to disclose. That case, too, was dismissed.

Why It Matters

These two cases were dismissed for reasons that have nothing to do with whether the defendants were guilty or innocent — and everything to do with how the case against them was run.

That should give us pause. Our system rests on a bargain: the state may accuse a person of a crime, but in return it must be ready to prove it, fairly and within a reasonable time. When the Crown is not ready on the first date, that can happen to anyone. When it is not ready on the second, and then the third, the balance shifts. A 19-year-old with no record had to present himself at court again and again for a two-year-old allegation, arranging his life around a case the prosecution could not move forward. Justice delayed, the old phrase goes, is justice denied — and it is denied not only to defendants, but to complainants and to the public, who are entitled to see matters resolved rather than left to drift.

Disclosure matters for the same reason. The obligation on the prosecution to hand over relevant material — the CCTV, the recordings, the communications — is not a technicality or a favour to the defence. It is one of the few practical guarantees that a person can actually test the case against them. A prosecution that decides
which evidence to share, and when, is a prosecution marking its own homework. When a court dismisses a case because that duty was not met, it is not letting someone “off on a technicality.” It is enforcing the standard that keeps every case honest — including the ones that do end in conviction.

None of this means the underlying allegations were baseless. It means they were never properly put to the test, because the machinery of the prosecution failed to deliver what fairness required. For the public to have confidence in the courts, those failures cannot simply be absorbed in silence, case after case, as though
they carry no cost. They carry a very real one.

Note to readers

The above traffic matter describes the defence’s assertions, made after the hearing. No court made any finding of misconduct against any officer, and the descriptions of police conduct are untested allegations.