Legal Question in Criminal Law in Missouri

Re: Domestic Violence

Your wife can contact the prosecutor and state the fact that she does not want to prosecute you. The choice to prosecute you or not belongs to the prosecutor and not to your wife. If the prosecutor is agreeable, then you wife should sign an Affidavit of Non-Prosecution that wil be filed with the prosecutor and the court. If the prosecutor is not agreeable and proceeds with prosecution, the subpoena served upon your wife requires her to appear in court to testify at trial. If she attempts to take the fifth, she must use specific language to do so, and even then, the prosecutor may convince the judge that there is no way that your wife answering the question will tend to incriminate your wife and the judge might order you wife to answer. If you wife does not appear in court the judge might issue a Capias (similar to a Warrant, and have your wife picked up. This little story illustrates why it is best not to engage in anything that resembles domestic violence in the first place, and also why it is often best not to get the law enforcement authorities involved. By the way, the prosecutors office gets very tired of women who call the police and enlist the prosecutors and court system's help, only to change their mind and want to drop everything once things cool down, and the prosecutor's response is often to proceed in cases where the woman claims to have changed her mind.