American Criminal Courts

Legal Process and Social Context

Casey Welch,John Randolph Fuller

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317524137
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Droit
• Sous-sujet: Théorie et pratique du droit

American Criminal Courts: Legal Process and Social Context is an introductory-level text that offers a comprehensive study of the legal processes that guide criminal courts and the social contexts that introduce variations in the activities of actors inside and outside the court. Specifically the text focuses upon: Legal Processes. U.S. criminal courts are constrained by several legal processes and organizational structures that determine how the courts operate and how laws are applied. This book explores how democratic processes develop the criminal law in the United States, the documents that define law (federal and state constitutions, legal codes, administrative policies), the organizational structure of courts at the federal and state levels, the overlapping authority of the appeals process, and the effect of legal processes such as precedent, jurisdiction, and the underlying legal philosophies of various types of courts. Although most texts on criminal courts do a credible job of describing legal processes, this text looks more deeply into the origins of criminal law, historic turning points in the criminal law, conditions that affect the decision-making of criminal justice practitioners, and the contentious political process that affects how criminal laws are considered. Social Contexts.

The criminal courts are staffed by people who represent different perspectives, occupational pressures, and organizational goals. The text includes chapters on actors in the traditional courtroom workgroup (judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys), as well as those outside the court who seek to influence it, including advocacy groups, media, and politicians. It is the interplay between the court legal processes and the social actors in the courtroom that makes the application of the criminal laws so fascinating. By focusing on the tension between the law (legal processes) and the actors inside and outside the courts system (social contexts), this text demonstrates how the courts are a product of "law in action, " and it presents the course content in a way that enables students to understand not only the "how" of the U.S. criminal court system but also the "why."

The United States has many laws to limit government abuse of power. Even though the criminal justice process is difficult, there is some effort to protect an individual’s constitutional rights.

Chapter 1

Principles and Decision-Making in U.S. Criminal Courts

Contents

Learning Objectives

The Rule of Law

Importance of Studying Criminal Courts

Overview of the Criminal Justice System

Theme 1: Steady Principles and Contextualized Changes

Legal Principles as a Source of Stability

Changes in the Courts

Theme 2: State Power and Individual Rights

Crime Control: The Exertion of State Power

Due Process: Individual Rights and Constraint of Arbitrary State Power

Due Process and the Three Branches of Government

Procedural Laws and Codes of Criminal Procedure

Balancing Crime Control and Individual Rights

Theme 3: Motivations, Decisions, and Actions of the Courtroom Workers

Patterns and Variance

Legal Frame: Principles, Duties of the Court, Procedure, and Reasoning

Internal Ecology: Organization, Processes, and Relationships Within a Court

External Ecology: Characteristics of Community

Legal Reality

Summary

Questions

References

Key Terms

agents of the state

bureaucracies

courtroom workgroup

criminal procedure

due process

due-process provisions

executive orders

external ecology

internal ecology

judicial review

judiciary

jurisdiction

justiciability

legal merits

legal principles

legal procedures

legal reality

legal reasoning

legal rules

mandatory minimum laws

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• 1. Discuss rule of law.
• 2. Tell why the study of criminal courts is important.
• 3. Define legal principles.
• 4. Explain how and why courts change over time.
• 5. Explain the two goals of the criminal courts.
• 6. Explain the crime control goal of the courts.
• 7. Define due process.
• 8. Explain legal reasoning and how it relates to legal principles.
• 9. Define internal ecology and tell why it is important.
• 10. Define external ecology and tell why it is important.

Imagine that you and a friend are leaving a movie theater in Boston, Massachusetts. It is summer, so you decide to go for an evening walk. Four blocks later you are stopped by two police officers who question you about a pipe bomb found in a trash can. You deny all knowledge of the incident. But because you are walking down an empty street at night less than a block from the scene, because neither of you live in the city, and because you have a cell phone in your pocket that looks suspicious because it is damaged and does not work, they arrest both of you and put you in separate police cars. Before questioning you further, one of the officers informs you that you have certain rights, including the right to stop talking and the right to a defense attorney.

After the police book you the next day, the prosecutor reviews the police work and evidence and decides the case has some merit. You insist on an attorney. After they establish that you are impoverished, one is assigned to your case. With the attorney at your side, you go through several court stages. At the initial appearance, you hear the preliminary charges against you, and the judge agrees with the prosecutor that there is enough evidence, or probable cause, to detain you and continue the case. Later that week you have a bail hearing, and because the case is a potential domestic terrorism case, the prosecutor asks the judge to deny you bail. The judge agrees with the prosecutor and rules that you must remain in jail. The grand jury agrees with the prosecutor and issues an indictment, and the formal charges against you are read at the arraignment.

The prosecutor continues to gather evidence as well as testimonies at discovery depositions. Through a successful motion for discovery, your attorney gets copies of evidence from the prosecutor. She files a motion for a direct verdict to dismiss the case because of inadequate evidence and a motion to suppress the cell phone evidence arguing that the police had no right to search your jacket. The judge denies both. Several times over weeks of pretrial hearings, the prosecutor asks you to plead guilty to a lesser charge, illegal use of explosives, rather than face the more serious charge of conspiracy to commit terrorism. You maintain your innocence and refuse this negotiated plea offer.

Your case moves to trial after a couple of months. The judge and prosecutor call a pretrial settlement conference to reoffer the negotiated plea. You refuse. The attorneys participate in voir dire to select the jurors. At trial, the attorneys give their opening statements, question and cross-examine witnesses, present evidence, present more motions to the court, then give final arguments. The jury, a group of ordinary citizens with no special training in law, deliberate on the evidence. They return a not guilty verdict, the same verdict your friend received a couple of days earlier.

The Rule of Law

Courts are essential to maintaining the rule of law that governs people and organizations fairly and equally. No individuals or groups should be subject to arbitrary government power, and no person is above the law. Courts hold a pivotal position in democratic governments: they monitor the government to ensure that it adheres to constitutional rules, respects the principles of justice, and protects the rights of people within its borders. Courts also convict and sentence people for breaking the criminal law. These are the due process and crime control goals of the court, and courts pursue both every day.

Courts adapt to changing social conditions, but they do not change at the whim of a president or governor. They are instead grounded by a set of enduring legal principles such as the presumption of innocence. When attorneys and judges apply the law to people accused of crime, their decisions are shaped by those goals and legal principles. A lawyer or judge cannot choose to be a “crime control” gal or “due process” guy, because their decisions are shaped by both mandates. Nor can they prosecute a case or sentence someone however they see fit. They are constrained by legal procedures and influenced by the internal operations of the court and external pressures, such as elections and the media.

Recall the opening scenario. Even though you suffered during the court process, your case was reviewed many times, and there was some effort to protect your constitutional rights. The attorneys and judges reviewed the police work; your defense attorney reviewed and challenged the prosecutor’s work; and the grand jury and trial jury reviewed the work of the police and prosecutor. Your case could have been filtered out of the justice system at any time, from the police deciding there was not enough evidence to the judge dismissing the case. Now imagine two people leaving a theater in Iran. One of them is Kouhyar Goudarzi, an active member for the Committee of Human Rights in Iran. He is arrested but not informed of any rights. He is not provided an attorney, and his family does not know where he is taken. His fate is left to the whims of the government [1].

The difference in these two cases hinges largely on the power of the court systems to review the other branches of government. Iran’s courts are too weak to constrain the rest of the government. The United States has many laws to limit government abuse of power. The laws alone, however, are not enough to deter abuses by police and prosecutors or to correct abuses once they occur. It is the court system that continuously reviews the government’s work to ensure that the police and prosecutor do not violate the laws of procedure, and it is the court system that often throws out cases that are weak or involve abuse.

What distinguishes the U.S. legal system is not the people, resources, or hierarchy of courts. These are common across the world. Rather, it is the legal principles such as due process and the rules derived from them, the adversarial process that enforces these rules, judicial oversight and review, and the tendency of other branches to respect the courts’ rulings. All these rules and court stages may seem cumbersome, but they serve as a barrier between individual rights and arbitrary government power [2]. As Harvard Law Professor Mary Glendon wrote in 1994, “Procedure implies structures and rules that endure beyond the controversies of the moment, that permit men and women to make reliable plans, that keep arbitrary discretion at bay” [3].

Importance of Studying Criminal Courts

The criminal courts are a cornerstone of the U.S. criminal justice system. Criminologists, political scientists, and legal philosophers study them. Thousands of lawyers deal with them every day. They influence everyone working in the criminal justice field, from police officers to paralegals to correctional officers. They affect millions of victims and suspects every year. The courts have judicial lawmaking powers, which are decisions that interpret statutes and the Constitution, establish legal principles, and influence later cases. Understanding the criminal courts is essential to understanding government power and succeeding in any occupation within the criminal justice system.

Most people have some knowledge of the court system from television, movies, or personal experience, and people reading a book about the criminal courts probably already have an even better understanding than the general public. Nonetheless, let’s take measure of our starting knowledge.

At any given moment, the criminal court system may appear to operate like a predictable factory assembly line, handling every case in the same manner with no changes in procedure. In fact, however, the court system deals with peculiar situations daily, adapts to changing social conditions, and is shaped by legal actors who are motivated by many factors. This does not mean the courts are capricious and change dramatically depending on the mood of the lawyers and judges. Reality lies between the rigid factory model and the arbitrary justice model. Three themes in the study of courts illuminate this complex relationship between predictability and change.

First, U.S. law is based on steady principles, such as precedent (a legal decision that is cited as a rule to resolve similar legal questions in later cases), yet changes along with society. U.S. law is dynamic, not static. Second, the legal principles and procedures emerge within a tension between state power and individual rights, or what is commonly characterized as crime control and due process. Third, the day-to-day enforcement of law in the criminal courts is performed by thousands of individuals who simultaneously conform to patterns of behavior and vary in their actions. Many social structures—from procedural laws to organizational resources to political pressures—influence their decisions. Before explaining each theme, let’s situate the courts within the larger criminal justice system.

Overview of the Criminal Justice System

The criminal justice system is composed of four components—law, police, courts, and corrections—each one being a system within itself. A system refers to multiple parts that work toward some goal or task and are interdependent. In the case of the criminal justice system, this system is instrumental, meaning that it is designed to achieve clearly specified goals, namely the enforcement of substantive laws that prohibit certain activities (such as burglary or fraud) while adhering to procedural laws which constrain and direct the conduct of the agents of the state when they are processing a case.

As you look over the components in Focus on Discretion, keep in mind your evening in Boston. In that hypothetical case, you were subjected to all four components of the criminal justice system, and therefore all three branches of the government. The legislative branch wrote the laws that criminalized bomb-use by civilians. The executive branch, which controls the police, enforced the law and arrested you. You were detained in a correctional facility operated by the executive branch. And, fortunately for you, a separate branch of government, the judicial branch, operates the courts and determined that the police and prosecutor did not gather enough evidence to establish that you were guilty b...