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Criminal Law And Ethical Codes

Decent Essays

The prosecutor is a member of the justice system charged with the responsibility of prosecution in his or her jurisdiction (Elliott & Quinn, 2000). Prosecutors are required to exercise sound judgment in their official capacities. This means that they have to consider the context of a case before deciding to prosecute it or not. A prosecutor’s duty goes beyond convicting the accused. He or she has to ensure that justice prevails. The decision process on the cases to take or not is informed by the traditional professional conduct, the law and ethical codes. Strict adherence to the aforementioned sources of direction on prosecutor conduct and advisory board recommendations guides the decision on the cases to prosecute. This paper will focus on conduct of officers of the court. More specifically, the paper will cover the expected conduct of the police, prosecutors and judges.
The first criteria for selecting a case to pursue is the based on whether there is conflict of interest or not in the execution of the duties (Molan, 2004). Any instance that would affect his partial approach to the case or give him undue information on a case is grounds for conflict of interest (Herring, 2007). In the event a prosecutor was involved in a process before being employed by the government as a private practitioner or in any other non-governmental capacity, he or she ought to be excused from the case unless there is an n explicit law that permits representation. If a prosecutor is

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