...Due Process University of Phoenix The main purpose of due process is to show a person that the law expresses the fairness against the power of the state. The public nature of the legal system is shown through due process, which ensures the idea that the government is responsible, not that person. To help ensure justiceand equality it is recommended that public scrutiny is necessary (Merver, Grant 2003). Due process is intended to provide people with protection from government when it comes to our civil rights to liberty, life, and property without due process of law it would be very easy from to get in trouble for something they have not even done. Due process has a very big role when it comes to the public perception mainly because the systems seem fair concerning the legitimacy of the law, legal actors, and the courts. As stated by (Meyer, Grant, 2003) "perception of fairness or unfairness reflect concern with the process of justice as well as the outcome". The concept of due process is the protection of our lives, liberty, and property rights, according to due process of life the government cannot stop someone that has been convicted of a capital crime of his or her life before they can go through and complete the appellate process. Everybody that is a citizen of the United States has many different liberty interest and due process of liberty restrict that it keeps the government from taking this liberty...
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...protect the public and uphold laws, part of this process includes plea bargaining, plea bargaining is a process in which the defendant agrees to plead guilty in most cases in order to obtain a lesser charge to the crime as well as some leniency from the prosecutor(Schmalleger, Siegel, & Worrall, 2011). There are two types of plea bargains, they are called sentence bargaining and charge bargaining ("Nolo Law For All", 2014). Sentence bargaining is another process in which the courts practice, the major differences between sentence bargaining and charge bargaining are, sentence bargaining is when the defendant agrees to plead guilty to a lesser sentence, in charge bargaining the prosecutor negotiates with the defendant to determine which charges are being filed against the defendant or the defendant pleads guilty to a less serious crime than the original charge(Schmalleger, Siegel, & Worrall, 2011). There are some advantages and disadvantages of plea bargaining, such as lesser charges, but in some cases the plea bargain gives the rights up of the defendant to make the prosecution prove charges against the defendant ("Nolo Law For All", 2014). Plea bargaining has a long history behind it, it has its problems and shortcomings, however it is still a highly recognized process in the courts today. Plea bargain is defined as a mutual understanding between the prosecutor and the defendant, this usually places the defendant in a guilty status and agrees to a lighter charge and or less...
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...talk about the case and decide on a verdict. The vote has to be unanimous either guilty or not guilty for the case to end. To start the deciding, the jurors decide to take a preliminary vote to see where they stand. After counting the ballots the vote is 11 to 1, guilty. Juror number eight is the one who votes not guilty. The reason that juror eight voted not guilty was because he was not sure that the boy was guilty and he wanted to talk about it. One of the jurors decided to take a minute for each juror to tell their side of the story and what they personally think about the case. After a lot of main points were made such as there being two of the identical knives, the woman in her apartment saying she saw the murder take place through the window of the El train, and how the old man said that he heard the boy say that he was going to kill his father and then went to his door to see the boy run down the stairs. After all of this has taken place they decide to take another vote. The verdict is still 11 to 1 in the favor of guilty. Juror eight is now going over the time periods of when the woman said she saw the murder. Juror eight is also trying to explain how the man could not have seen the boy run down the stairs because the old man would not have had enough time to get out of bed. After juror eight makes all of his points they take another vote. This time the vote is now 6 guilty and 6 not guilty. Juror ten is very disgusted at how a lot of the jurors are changing their votes...
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...system they was found that this process was losing ground fast. In the early century it was perceived that, the guilty plea was substituting trial by jury more often although guilty plea was being made known it was found that more than three times as many criminal convictions had resulted from guilty pleas. Courts have used plea bargains in order to help keep the congested judicial system working as smoothly as possible. Plea bargains are known to assist the court, they also oppose our rights by violating a state statue. A plea bargain is an agreement to plead guilty to a lesser charge with less-stringent sentences. Types of Plea Bargaining The courts of justice use plea bargaining as a vital part of the court process. .According to Siegel, Schmalleger, and Worrall (2011), change bargaining is when the defendant and the prosecuting attorney negotiates the charges that would be filed (p. 318). This would include the defendant pleading guilty on multi-count charges that are considered lesser charge in return for a lighter sentence. Count bargaining is considered by many to fall under charge bargaining. The defendant claims responsibility to only one or more of the initial charges, and the prosecutor makes other charges disappear. On the other hand sentence bargaining the defendant would plead guilty in exchange for a shorter or easier sentence. Both types are to satisfy the parties involved mutually and are voluntary entered upon in the process. Another type of bargaining is fact...
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...Criminal Justice Process 1 Criminal Justice Process Betsabe Aguirre CRJ 100, Section 010016 Professor Nicholas Myles, J.D. October 12, 2010. Criminal Justice Process 2 Criminal Justice Process Imagine living in the US where crime is out of control. Where laws are broken and there is no punishment for our actions. It wouldn’t be a nice place to live. This is why we have the criminal justice process. The agencies of criminal justice must process the cases that come before them. They begin with an investigation of the reported crime. Placing crime under control is a complicated process requiring information and following many steps. It consists of Investigation and Arrest, Pretrial Activities, Adjudication, Sentencing, and Corrections. Investigation and Arrest The first step in the criminal justice process is investigation and arrest. When a crime has been committed the first thing law enforcement does is conduct an investigation. Evidence is gathered at the crime scene and a follow up investigation to try to put together the sequence of activities. Depending on the results they may choose to arrest an individual or individuals. If they make no arrest the process is complete. But if an arrest is made the suspect will be booked. When the suspect is being booked which means a procedure where pictures are taken, fingerprints are made, and personal information such as their name, address, date of birth, weight, and height is gathered and put into the system. Details...
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...Richard Young, and Mandy Burton “The great majority (over 90%) of defendants whose cases proceed to trail plead guilty and forego their right to an adversarial battle...The system operates as a conveyer belt, moving suspects through a series of routinised procedures which lead a vast majority of those cases that reach court to conviction”. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate the statement above , highlighting on key aspects like Adversarial Battle, Conveyer Belt , and Routinised Procedure in determining the accuracy of the proclamation made by the authors; as well as utilising personal experience from my court visits to reach a conclusion. While the statement above specified that 2“(Over 90%) of defendants whose cases proceed to trail plea guilty and forgo their right to an adversarial battle” , many would agree that this statement is true. For example, Andrew Ashworth claims that “3 even among either way...
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...The Criminal Justice Process Edith Lewis Criminal Law & Procedure (BLJ1442A) Agustin Pena November 15, 2014 The Criminal Justice Process Even though the defendant can be found guilty at his trial he, has the right to to file an appeal to see if legal errors occurred which could possibly affect the outcome of the verdict or the trial. The first step in the criminal justice process is the investigation and plea negotiations begin after the defendant is charged and a trial is set when the plea negotiations fail. The defendant has an arraignment hearing where he is allowed to enter a plea of guilty, not guilty, or no contest. In this step probable cause is established with the evidence that is gathered so that an arrest can be made. Each state has their own way of processing felony criminal charges in a state court. They have their own procedures and rules that describe the criminal justice process for their states. The first step in the criminal justice process is the investigation. Before an arrest can be made in a crime, a crime must be committed and reported so that an investigation can be initiated. The Criminal Justice Process, 2014 noted that, “During the investigation the investigating officer seeks to obtain a search warrant if there is enough evidence in a particular location” (The Criminal Justice Process, 2014). When the investigators submit the information to the judge, the judge decides if there is “probable cause” to issue a search warrant for...
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...States criminal justice system today is the exchange of prosecutorial and legal concessions for pleas of guilty. Generally, a defendant in a criminal trial will enter “one of three pleas: guilty, not guilty, or nolo contendere.” Nolo contendere, otherwise known as no contest has the same effect as a guilty plea, which means the defendant is convicted and accepts punishment but does not admit guilt (lawyers.com). But in the plea-bargaining process, which aims to avoid trial because of costs and time, a defendant and his or her defense attorney may negotiate with the prosecutor for one of four different bargains. In the first type of deal, the prosecutor may reduce...
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...shows the strength of a deliberative process that enables individuals, who have “nothing to gain or lose,” to reach a verdict. In the American jury system “everybody deserves a fair trial” and in Twelve Angry Men the defendant gets a very fair trial. All the jurors have their own opinions on the case but in the end a decision is made. The jury, and the audience, never discovers if in fact the defendant did murder his father. His guilt or innocence seems to be almost irrelevant. At the beginning of the play the vote was 11-1 in favour of guilty but the 8th Juror convinces the others to have another vote. As the play progresses more and more jurors being to change their vote and by the end of the play the vote was 11-1 in favour of ‘not guilty.’ The defendant does get a fair trial because throughout the play there was enough “reasonable doubt” for him to be guilty. The 10th juror had no intentions on giving the defendant a ‘fair trial’ and just wanted him to be sent to the “electric chair.” By the play’s end all twelve men had agreed to a “not guilty” vote. The 8th Juror had managed, by simply pointing out “sometimes the facts that are staring you in the face are wrong!” to convince even the strongest advocates of a “guilty” verdict that reasonable doubt exists and therefore the defendant gets a fair trial. Throughout the play there is ‘reasonable doubt’ and this is what results in all the jurors being convinced that the ‘kid’ is “not guilty.” The 8th juror possesses a clear understanding...
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...deliberation room to decide the fate of this young boy. All evidence is against the boy and a guilty verdict would send him to die in the electric chair. The judge informed the jurors that they are faced with a grave decision and that the court would not entertain any acts of mercy for the boy if found guilty. Even before the deliberation talks begin it is apparent most of the men are certain the boy is guilty. However, when the initial poll is taken Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) registered a shocking not guilty vote. Immediately the room is in uproar. The rest of the jury resents the inconvenient of his decision. After questioning his sanity they hastily decide to humor the juror #8 (Henry Fonda) by agreeing to discuss the trial for one hour. Eventually, as the talks precede juror #8 slowly undermines their confidence by saying that the murder weapon is widely available to anyone, and that the testimony of the key witness is suspect. Gradually they are won over by his arguments and even the most narrow minded of his fellow jurors hesitantly agrees with him. Their verdict is now a solid not guilty. Arriving at a unanimous not guilty verdict does not come easily. The jury encounters many difficulties in learning to communicate and deal with each other. What seems to be a decisive guilty verdict as deliberations begin slowly becomes a questionable not sure. The movie deals with issues relating to the process of decision making, communication, conflict management and committees. This paper will...
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...Criminal Justice System Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Introduction The criminal justice process is entirely of the whole process of arresting and punishing criminals or law violators. This process involves a number of processes that are followed in ensuring that due process is followed. Additionally, this process ensures that there is protection of the innocents, criminals or law breakers are fairly or justly treated, and ensuring that justice is practiced by agencies of law enforcement that include corrections and courts. The major processes of criminal justice include; investigation, apprehend, pre-trial, trial, appeals, sentencing, and corrections. The entire process should be carried out justly in order to protect the rights of all people involved whether offenders or innocents. Investigation When it is clearly determined that a crime or an offence has been committed, investigation is done in order to ensure that relevant and accurate information is gathered enough to sue the suspect. Investigation is considered as the first step involved in the criminal justice process. During this process all information that are related to the crime are objectively scrutinized. Investigation in criminology is defined as a process of exploring, gathering, preparing, identifying, and presenting relevant information that help in determining and explaining what took place at the scene of a crime (Hess & Orthman, 2009). It is through investigation that the person...
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...this film, the numerous functional and dysfunctional properties of the 12-jury men play a big role in analysing and evaluating the main purpose at hand, namely identifying the young man guilty or innocent for the murder of his father. The different roles the 12-jury men play in the deliberation of the capital murder case is prominent. Firstly, a role can be defined as a set of expected behaviour patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a social unit. Different groups enforce different role requirements on individuals namely; role expectation, role perception and role conflict. (i) Role expectation: Role expectation can be defined as the role others believe a person should play or the way others believe a person should act in a given situation. When looking at the Jurors’ main role in any court system and in the film, it is expected of them to decide whether or not the defendant should be declared guilty or not guilty. (ii) Role perception: Role perception can be defined as the individual’s view of how he or she should act in a given situation. When looking at the film the Jurors individual frame of position and prejudices influence how they individually perceive the case. Because the Jurors perceptions are unique it leads to complications in the communication process. In the film “12 Angry men” Juror no. 3 decides beforehand that it is an “open and shut case”. He validates his verdict by using emotionally laden language which eventually influences and...
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...The Criminal Justice system contains and is built around many laws and concepts which either help better the system or hinder it. Out of all of them, I believe the most important concept of all is due process. The least complex way of describing due process would be to simply call it “procedural fairness”. However, in the textbook it is defined as what “ the U.S. Constitution requires that criminal justice case processing be conducted with fairness equity.” The 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution all guarantee this right. Without due process criminal justice would be incomparable with the amount of “justice” actually being brought from the system to our communities. One of our individual rights warranted to us by the...
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...which found the boy guilty eleven votes to one set the tone for the first half of the movie. During this time, the majority were still quite fixed in their guilty verdict and not very open or willing to consider other points of view. A significant transition took place when the old man supported the architect's (jury 8) questioning of the validity of the testimony. At this point the discussion the man from the slum, also changed his vote. This was right at the midpoint of the movie and soon after this the tone of the conversation of the group began to change. Following the midpoint transition, the second phase was marked by more skilful dialogue and genuine curiosity. The group moved towards a firmer conviction that the boy was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Ultimately, even the most stubborn of the jurors changed their views. A2: The Group Think Phenomenon Group-think, which is agreeing to avoid conflict this theory exists most often when people are in a group, because some people have the tendency to agree with the majority instead of stating their own opinions. The members of the jury all vote guilty right off the bat except Juror No 8. The other jurors never had much reason to vote guilty in the first place. They simply heard other angry jurors, namely No 3, No 10, and No 7 spew anger towards the boy and the obviousness of his guilt, so they went along. The other jurors sought out to appease and get along with these jurors, and thus voted guilty, when they had...
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...1 THE INS AND OUTS OF THE PLEA BARGAIN PROCESS Carla Smith April 15, 2013 The reason that the crime control model oppose the plea bargaining is that the criminal avoids the true sentence and receives a lighter sentence when they take the plea bargain. The reasons that the due process model oppose the plea bargaining is that the plea bargaining undercuts the rights of people and could cause innocent people to go to prison. Some people plead guilty to the crime just to avoid the death sentence at trial, take the Alford v. North Carolina 1971. He plead guilty for that reason. The caseload hypothesis is when the lawyer’s caseloads are so heavy they start giving plea bargains. If there were more of everyone and everything, we could prosecute more people. Another reason for plea bargaining is to make sure these criminal do some kind of time and get them off the streets and if there is not enough evidence to get a for sure guilty at trial. I believe that that the second explanation is the best and most accurate. This seems to be the most popular reason. The significance of Boykin v. Alabama is that the Supreme Court stated that it was the judge’s fault for accepting a plea bargain from a defendant without showing that is was voluntary and intelligent. The ‘jury trial penalty’ is when the defendant is not offered a plea bargain or does not take the plea bargain and decides to go to trial. Alford plea is when a person pleads guilty and accepts the plea bargain but is still...
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