Do Judges Comply With The Principles Of Due Process

The criminal trial process aims to provide justice for all those involved, while it succeeds in the majority of cases, it effectiveness is influenced and reduced by certain factors. These include the legal representation involved in a case and the availability of legal aid, the capacity of the jury assessing the trial, the credibility of scientific evidence and the impact of social media on the trial process. Due to such flaws the criminal trial process is not always an effective means of achieving justice.

In a consequent study to that discussed above, another team of researchers investigated the effect of forensic evidence on the outcome of various criminal cases. By analyzing data from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the researchers concentrated their study on decision-making during the cases, characteristics of these cases, and how forensic evidence relates to these cases (Peterson, 2013). Due to the scope of this paper, the study of how forensic evidence relates to the

Discretion in policing and the court system is a necessary and unavoidable facet of criminal justice work, yet it is still very controversial. Discretion exists when courtroom actors (police officers, attorneys, judges) have the flexibility to choose an appropriate response to a situation. Police discretion is defined as “The opportunity of law enforcement officers to exercise choice in their daily activities” (Nowacki, 2015). This means that actors with a great deal of discretion at their disposal may allow biases to affect their decision-making. These decisions lead to important implications throughout the criminal justice process, especially in the courtroom. The process begins with the decision to arrest by a law enforcement officer in the field. Once the case is forwarded to the prosecuting attorney, multifarious avenues of discretionary decisions are available to resolve a case. Potential issues that could arise and that are ever-present in everyday policing include racism, sexism and socialism (Miller, 2015). These issues ultimately have a negative affect on the criminal justice process, leading civilians to not trust the one process and actors that are there to help them. While discretion should play a role in the actions a courtroom actor takes and cannot be eliminated entirely, instead it should be limited and controlled throughout the criminal justice environment so that citizens can once again trust the process and so that there will be no disparities.

In chapter 8 of Adam Benforado Unfair, Benforado explains how a judge’s mind can be effected from a bias perspective. There are two types of judge’s, an umpire judge who calls cases as they are through his little black book of rules, and a regular judge who bases their cases off of personal experiences and have clouded minds making mistakes that those who work in the Supreme Court do not notice. If data had been collected from jury trials, hidden biases would have been uncovered sooner but not that biases are visible in our court system, changes need to be made. Benforado makes it clear that questions arise for judges such as how does one know for sure where bail should be set, whether a photograph of the defendant is unfairly prejudicial,

It is easy to see that the legal factors involved are themselves not perfect. Since the Court is made up of human beings who are similarly imperfect, it is not implausible to suppose that the Court likewise

Prosecutors play a critical role in determining a defendant’s guilt. Despite this role, the powers ascribed to prosecutors have long been debated. In the 1960’s and 1970’s the United States Supreme Court sought to clarify the powers ascribed to prosecutors in three cases. These cases included: Brady v. Maryland 373 U.S. 83, Giglio v. United States 405 U.S. 150, and the United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97. Although the issue explored by the Supreme Court differed in each of these cases, the verdict in each case helped to clarify whether or not prosecutors in the United States had the right to suppress evidence.

In the article, “Supreme Court Decision Focuses State Attention on Sentencing Regimes,” written by Don Stemen and Daniel F. Wilhelm, the authors expand the idea of the actions taken to determine the criminal sentence in the Blakely v. Washington case. In the case, Blakely argued that this sentencing procedure deprived him of his federal Sixth Amendment right to have a jury determine beyond a reasonable doubt all facts legally essential to his sentence (Blakely v. Washington, n.d). During the sentencing process, numerous aspects has to be taken into consideration to give the defendant an appropriate sentence.

From our class sessions, in order to hand down a ruling, a judge must first interpret the law before applying it to the case. Moreover, judges have other important responsibilities in the courtroom, such as admitting/denying evidence, instructing the jury, safeguarding the defendant 's rights and state 's interests in justice, upholding dignity, showing fairness, handing down sentences, discriminating/indiscriminating sentencing structures, even having to consider probation sanctions to impose on probationers. For instance, near the end of the proceeding, the judge instructed the jury about giving a verdict and the upcoming agenda for when they are to decide guilt or innocence. The judge played an active role in ensuring there is fairness on both sides of the prosecution and defense.

The criminal trial process is an interesting process that takes place in Courtrooms all across the United States and throughout the globe. This study intends to set out the various steps in the criminal trial process in the American justice system. A trial is described as a "legal forum for resolving individual disputes, and in the case of a criminal charge, it is a means for establishing whether an accused person is legally guilty of an offense. The trial process varies with respect to whether the matter at issue is civil in nature or criminal. In either case, a jury acts as a fact-finding body for the court in assessing information and evidence that is presented by the respective parties in a case. A judge presides over the court and addresses all the legal issues that arise during the trial. A judge also instructs the jury how to apply the facts to the laws that will govern in a given case." (3rd Judicial District, 2012)

Obstructing a judge’s ability to assess the circumstances of an offence in individual cases has the potential to lead to major miscarriages of justice. This may occur in cases where the circumstances equitably demand leniency but due to their nature, legislatively fall under a disproportionate mandatory

People say that when they were segregated that they were all friends but obviously not would a person treat anybody in their real family like this.It is impossible to be completly unbias. People say that the justice system is unbiased because judges are unbiased all the time.Most judges are but they make assumption as soon as they see the child and is already thinking about what they need to before the child even gets to speak. Judges say they listen to every case the same and show no favoritism towards race,gender, or age. But they do not no matter what people do they will always pick and choose what they want to listen too. Judges are normal meaning that they are not perfect . So they make mistakes and show bias to they are normal so of course

The legitimacy of the criminal justice system is based largely upon both its effectiveness and its fairness. Its effectiveness is judged by its ability to investigate and detect crime, identify offenders and mete out the appropriate sanctions to those who have been convicted of offences. Its fairness is judged by its thoroughness and the efforts it makes to redress the resource imbalance between the accused and the state at the investigatory, pre-trial, trial and appellate stages. The system does this by providing evidentiary protection and effective legal representation at all points.

Although rationality does not always exist, much of the functioning of criminal justice agencies is unplanned, poorly coordinated, and unregulated. Existing systems include some components that are very ancient, additionally each of the institutions have their own set of goals and priorities that sometimes conflict with those of other institutions, or with the goals and priorities of the system as a whole. Furthermore, each of these institutions have substantial unregulated discretion in making particular decisions such as the victim's decision to report a crime (Frase & Weidner).

The expectation from our judges that they will always act objectively in making their decisions is correct but only to a certain extent. By using the theories of interpretation and judicial decision-making of both Dworkin and American Legal Realism, it is evident that a balancing act occurs between objective judgments and interpretation and subjective judgments and interpretation. Often, subjective judgments are the most dominant to a large extent. One must look at the ideas of Dworkin in terms of considering that judgments have aspects of both objectivity and subjectivity. One must also look at the ideas of American Legal Realism where subjectivity plays a gigantic role in judgments leaving objectivity with little or no influence

Distinction of roles between judges and juries is a further fundamental difference between the adversarial and inquisitorial systems. In an adversarial system, there is a division of work between a judge and jury. The role of the judge is to adjudicate the issue of law and to ensure that the trial proceeds comply with the procedural and substantial laws, while the role of the jury is to adjudicate the issue of facts as served by the opposing parties based on the law given by judges. Generally, a judge will not interfere in jury’s decision making, but this approach varies subject to matters being decided in the criminal or civil cases. In civil cases, a judge has a power to set aside a decision taken by jury if such decision was not made in accordance with the applicable law. However, in criminal cases a judge does not