Reply #98: You are probably right. Once something is filed in court it does have to

[Catrina]

be dealt with. However, a prosecutor can decide not to go ahead with charges as I understand it. If that's what happens it can be dealt with secretly in court and the public may never know about it, according to this report: (Unless someone leaks it as happened in a case further down in the article)

Discovering secret dockets


According to a survey by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for this guide, federal courts and many state courts allow for "super-secret" cases, which never appear on the public docket or are hidden using pseudonyms, such as "Sealed v. Sealed" or "John Doe v. Jane Doe." Courts that maintain these secret dockets will neither confirm nor deny the existence of such cases. As a result, these cases proceed through the court system undetected.

http://www.rcfp.org/secretjustice/secretdockets/pg1.html