Nolo contendre, and he means it!!!

(HT: Division of Labour.)

The Fulton County (Georgia) district attorney brought drug charges against Jason Warner. He declined to appear in court.

It's probably just as well, as he was dead at the time.

On Nov. 14, 2003, Atlanta police had arrested Warner, 20, in northwest Atlanta on a charge of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. A year later, in November 2004, while he was out on bond, Warner was shot and killed by a homeowner as he and another man were breaking into a house in Grove Park. The killing was reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Yet Warner was formally charged by the district attorney's office in March, four months after he was killed, and a notice was mailed to his mother. In response, Virginia Warner sent a copy of her son's death certificate to a probation officer who had supervised him after a January 2004 conviction for hindering police in an unrelated case and giving a false statement.

Prosecutors plead a heavy case load, and are rather defensive about the whole thing.

"How would we have known he was dead?" said spokesman Erik Friedly. "If you write a story and say we indicted a dead man, it sounds crazy."