LEWISTON — A District Court judge dismissed a charge of gross sexual assault against an Auburn teenager Thursday because the prosecution was unprepared for trial.

The teen, now 18, was scheduled to go on trial Thursday morning in 8th District Court. However, when the hearing was set to begin, Assistant District Attorney Richard Beauchesne was in Oxford County on another matter.

Prosecutors later asked for a continuance in the case, but the request was denied by Judge Rick Lawrence, who instead dismissed the charge against the teen.

“State not prepared for hearing,” according to the notice of dismissal filed in the Lewiston courthouse. “Motion to continue denied.”

The defense attorney described the case as a product of flaws within the local court system. Those flaws have existed since April when the position of juvenile prosecutor was cut, he said.

Beauchesne had been acting as a “pinch hitter” in the case, defense attorney Allan Lobozzo said, because there is no longer a prosecutor assigned full time to juvenile cases.

When they eliminated that position last year, Lobozzo said, “they lost their institutional memory.”

Beauchesne works out of Oxford County and had been asked to fill in on the Auburn case.

“You can’t use pinch hitters forever,” Lobozzo said.

District Attorney Andrew Robinson acknowledged that his staff is often stretched thin, which may have contributed to Thursday’s “snafu” in the juvenile case.

“The volume of work that we ask the DA’s support staff to oversee,” Robinson said, “is too much.”

County commissioners recently approved funds for a trial assistant position, Robinson said, which he expects will help alleviate the type of miscommunication that led to Thursday’s missed hearing.

In that case, Robinson said, prosecutors thought they were waiting for an updated hearing list, when in fact the hearing had already been set.

“It was simply overlooked,” he said.

According to court documents, the accused was 17 years old in May 2016 when he allegedly had sexual contact with a teenage girl in Auburn, an act the girl claimed was the result of compulsion.

When the charge was dismissed Thursday, Lobozzo asked that the dismissal be made with prejudice, meaning the teenager could not be charged again for the same crime.

However, that motion was denied by Judge Lawrence.

Robinson will have to decide whether to re-charge the teen. Prosecutors are expected to reach out to the girl in the case before deciding how to proceed.

“We’re not going to put the kid through it all again,” Robinson said, “if we don’t feel we have a strong case.”