At Arraignment, Prosecutor Told Me I Can Make Deal or Wait for "Mistrial"

[kvothe]

My question involves traffic court in the State of: Georgia

OK, so I went to my arraignment and it was ridiculously fast-paced with none of this preamble I've heard other people talking about happening at arraignments. I never saw a judge; they just put us all in a room and had the prosecutor call us up one by one to make a plea bargain.

When it was my turn (this is within ten minutes of me getting there, about seven minutes of was spent waiting in like to "check in") I go up, the prosecutor names me a price (that's all he says; I go up and he just says the amount and looks at me), his offer to get me to plead guilty I figured. I think he thought I'd take it but I looked at him a little confused because of the fastness of all this. Then he said after looking at me "Or, you can wait for the mistrial." I just said "I think I'd rather wait for the trial" and he goes "OK!" and that was it. I went to sit down again and almost immediately was called up by I don't know who to sign the paper saying I'm going to trial and that was it. Ridiculously fast.

Anyway, after leaving this whirlwind of a court, I started thinking more clearly and wished I'd asked him what he meant by mistrial. I'm assuming he meant he doesn't think the officer will show and my case will be dismissed. BUT, I got home and looked up mistrial and it's a different definition, and states that in most cases a mistrial means a new trial will have to take place, which doesn't seem right applied to my case, a simple traffic ticket.

So, my question is - is a mistrial the same as a dismissal (which from reading around here I'm hoping for dismissal)? Did the prosecutor just misspeak (which seems odd that a prosecutor would misspeak between mistrial and dismissal)? The situation just seems odd compared to what I've read around here so I want to make sure this traffic court is not going to do anything weird to me.

[Mr. Knowitall]

I suspect that you misheard the prosecutor. If you want to know what he meant, you need to ask him.

[kvothe]

I 100% definitely did not mishear him. He without a doubt said mistrial, and in the flurry of activity I didn't think to ask him about it.

ETA - The way I took it, he was basically telling me "pay now and get this done and over with, or go to the trouble of having to show up in court again to get it thrown out altogether". It's just on second thought after I'd left and looked up the definition, the word "mistrial" seems a weird thing for him to say.