on behalf of the state. In cases where the NPA decides not to proceed with a prosecution, a private individual with a direct interest may in terms of Section 7 of the Criminal Procedure Act bring a private criminal prosecution against an individual. The private prosecutor must first apply for a nolle prosequi from the Director of Public Prosecutions (to confirm that the State does not intend to proceed with a trial), and bring the private prosecution within three months. Notable cases and other references The prosecution of Jefferson Davis for treason was dropped in 1868 after a declaration of general amnesty by President Andrew Johnson. The trial of the prime suspect for the 1902 Peasenhall murder in Suffolk in England was stopped by the Attorney General after two juries failed to reach a verdict. In 1924, Connecticut prosecutor Homer Stille Cummings dismissed charges against Harold Israel, a vagrant accused of murdering a popular priest in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Cummings destroyed the evidence his own office had compiled against Israel in a 90-minute courtroom presentation. The case became the basis of the 1947 film Boomerang! In 1925, prosecutors elected to dismiss murder charges against the remaining ten defendants in the case of People vs. Ossian Sweet. It involved a black family that had defended its home against a white mob. They were defended by attorney Clarence Darrow, who was retained by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The trial was presided over by Detroit Recorder's Court Judge Frank Murphy, who went on to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. After an initial mistrial, Henry Sweet (Ossian's brother, who admitted he fired the shot) was acquitted by a jury on grounds of self-defense; the dismissals of the charges against the ten remaining defendants followed. In 1957, John Bodkin Adams, who worked in Eastbourne, England, was tried for the murder of an elderly widow, Edith Alice Morrell and indicted, but not tried for the murder of another widow, Gertrude Hullett. When he was found not guilty of killing the former, Attorney-General Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller controversially entered a nolle prosequi regarding the latter charge. The trial judge, Mr Justice Devlin, in his post-trial book commented: "The use of nolle prosequi to conceal the deficiencies of the prosecution was an abuse of process, which left an innocent man under the suspicion that there might have been