AUBURN – A judge ordered the local district attorney’s office to foot the $174.65 bill for a dismissed jury because the prosecutor was not prepared to go to trial and dropped the charge.

A clerk said the judge’s action was “extremely unusual.”

Jurors were lined up at the courtroom door earlier this week, ready to hear the case of a criminal operating under the influence charge against Auburn police officer Mitchell Sweetser.

Sweetser was charged earlier this year after a November accident in which he reportedly ran a red light and crashed into a pickup truck driven by Nathan Taylor, 25, of Auburn.

Assistant District Attorney Richard Beauchesne told Justice Thomas Delahanty II in court chambers that he couldn’t go forward with the case before getting the results of an autopsy on Taylor, who died June 14, about seven months after the accident.

Taylor had refused medical treatment at the scene of the accident. A spokeswoman at the Maine Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Tuesday the official cause and manner of Taylor’s death was not known. A death certificate filed at the Auburn City Clerk’s Office said he died in Lewiston.

Beauchesne told Delahanty he would re-file the complaint against Sweetser, even if the autopsy didn’t link Taylor’s death to the accident. If it did, it could trigger more serious charges.

Taylor’s mother had reportedly approached the prosecutor shortly before the trial, asking whether further charges could be brought against Sweetser after trial if the autopsy showed a link between the death and the accident. A defendant can’t be tried twice for the same crime.

In his order Monday, Delahanty said, “Based on the circumstances, the court finds that ADA Beauchesne did not know of all of the additional circumstances prior, but it is information that did exist and could have, and should have, been discovered by the use of ordinary care and due diligence in preparation of the case.”

Beauchesne declined Tuesday to comment on the bill or the case.

The price tag for the jury included $10 for each juror, including two alternates, plus a total of $34.65 for mileage, Delahanty included in a footnote.

Meanwhile, defense attorney Leonard Sharon had summoned a medical expert to fly to Maine from Wisconsin to testify at the trial. Sweetser had put up the expert overnight Monday even though the trial was canceled because the charge was dismissed.

District Attorney Norman Croteau, who handles billing for all trials held in Androscoggin County Superior Court, said the bill would be paid by the county as a trial cost. “I certainly respect the court’s decision and we’ll take care of it,” he said.

At the same time, Croteau said, “I respect the decision that had to be made by the prosecutors.”

Although the accident occurred in Auburn, it was investigated by the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department. The case was referred to the Maine Attorney General’s Office because local prosecutors and local police often work cases together. Beauchesne, who is assigned to the Oxford County office of the district attorney, typically doesn’t handle cases in Androscoggin County. He was supervised in the Sweetser case by Deputy Attorney General William Stokes.