• The Constitution is weakened by the excessive use of plea-bargaining to avoid a trial. Research has shown that criminal defendants who exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trail by jury are more severely punished than those who accept plea bargains (Devers, 2011, p. 2).
It is assumed that plea-bargaining weakens the criminal justice system by allowing violent criminals to plea out of serious charges and putting the disadvantaged and potentially innocent or partially innocent in a position where exercising their constitutional right to a trial by jury is too risky of an option. Prosecutors are required by the state to carry the burden and prosecute the accused. In cases where the victim is unwilling to testify or press charges the prosecutor
The author looks at the time period that the three were released and discusses the reason for their release, which is Alford plea. In this case, the defendant is voluntarily forced to plead guilty while still proclaiming his or her innocence. The author also looks at the evidence and ends up concluding that that there was little evidence that linked the defendants to the murder. In addition, the author criticizes the state’s government for forcing the men to plead guilty. Using another case, the author looks into this matter by examining the flaws related to the Alford’s plea.
David Feige’s Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey nto the Inferno of American Justice invites people from all walks of life to a second hand experience of the criminal justice system hard at work. What is most interesting about Feige’s work is its distinct presentation of the life of a public defender in the South Bronx. Instead of simply detailing out his experiences as a public defender, Feige takes it a step further and includes the experiences of his clients. Without the personal relationships that he carefully constructs with each of his defendants, Feige would not be able to argue that the criminal justice system is flimsy at best, decisions always riding on either the judge’s personal attitudes or the clients propensity towards plea bargaining.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=143703 This paper will seek to define the right to a speedy trial in regard to both federal and state law. In the text I will cover a few case examples, various guidelines, and render a thorough analysis regarding the right to a speedy trial. The 6th amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Speedy Trial Act of 1974 ensure a criminal respondent's entitlement to a rapid trial.
After spending countless hours discussing the criminal court system in class and familiarizing myself with the content of Justice Hands’ quote, I have come to a conclusion that ties together a collection of opinions. The death penalty is an arbitrary and ineffective method of punishment that should only be used under one circumstance; if the defendant has been unequivocally found guilty of the murder he committed and would rather succumb to the death penalty than spend the rest of his life in prison without parole. There have been numerous cases throughout the years that have taken place where a defendant was denied his fifth and sixth amendment right to a lawyer and fair trial, and was left with no choice but to hold himself to deliver his own testimony. These circumstances can dramatically influence the outcome of a trial since it creates an unequal chance for the accused. For example, in both Gideon v. Wainwright and Argersinger v. Hamlin, both defendants were denied their right to a counsel.
Our Constitution has long required the criminally accused to be tried by their peers. The question before us today is whether Florida’s death sentencing scheme violates the Sixth Amendment in light of the decision in Ring v. Arizona., 536 U.S. 584 (2002). We hold that it does violate the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. I
Both sides will carefully weigh the strength of their case and decide whether it is prudent to go to trial. The prosecution may also consider the publicity surrounding the case and whether there is public pressure to prosecute that particular defendant to the full extent of the law. The defense will consider the individual defendant’s desire to go to trial and the seriousness of the potential sentence. The Pros of Plea Bargaining
Our arguments against plea bargaining were based on the fact that it removes a fundamental Constitutional right from defendants, the right to a fair trial. There are many different reasons to be against plea bargains, and they all stem from this singular idea of denial of fundamental rights. It is clear that “…plea bargaining has undercut the goals of legal doctrines as diverse as the fourth amendment exclusionary rule, the insanity defense, the right of confrontation, the defendant’s right to attend criminal proceedings, and the recently announced right of the press and the public to observe the administration of criminal justice,” (Alschuler, 1983). The process of plea bargaining strips defendants of these rights and defenses and opens the
The history of the modern right to counsel for defendants who cannot afford to pay for counsel or lawyer goes back over a century ago; the Indiana Supreme Court in Webb v. Baird, 6 Ind. 13 (1853), officially recognized the right to counsel for a person accused of a crime. However, this decision was not based on constitutional or statutory law but warranted under “the principles of a civilized society.” Since the case of Webb v. Baird, the courts have immensely extended the right to counsel beyond just appointing an indigent person an attorney. For more than a hundred years, the Right to Counsel Clause was interpreted as simply granting the right to retain a private attorney to a defendant but didn’t mean that a poor criminal defendant had
The film Dear Zachary, directed by Kurt Kuenne, makes an argument in response to a very specific situation: the murder of Kuenne’s best friend Andrew Bagby and Bagby’s son Zachary, both killed by Andrew’s ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner. Kuenne argues that bail should be denied to anybody accused of a serious crime who also has custody of a child. While this argument is reasonable, it only provides a solution for very narrow circumstances. For the greater protection of society as a whole, an expanded version of Kuenne’s stance on bail laws is necessary. Bail should be denied not only to people accused of a serious crime who have custody of a child, but also to anybody suspect of a violent crime.
Fracture is a movie that focuses on the court proceedings of an attempted murder trial and emphasizes the legal aspects of this event. In the film, there are several instances in which the Constitutional Amendments are used in the movie as positive or negative rulings in the court. Because this is a movie follows a complex court case, it is an excellent source for these Constitutional Amendments and provides a multitude of examples to accurately represent the commonly used amendments in trials and arrests. This movie focuses primarily on the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, as well as the basic concepts of criminal justice.
“In 2005 the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that juries heard 4 percent of all alleged criminal offenses brought before federal courts. State courts match this trend” (Dzur, 2013, p. 31). Legal scholars also noted that state courts over the past 30 years have dropped 15 percent when utilizing a jury for a criminal trial, while only a 10 percent drop when a judge decides the case (Dzur, 2013). These statistics are dramatically higher for civil cases (Dzur,
Since the courts are backlogged and many public defenders and judges being overworked, this causes plea bargaining to be used repeatedly. According to Walker et al. (2018), plea bargaining leaves many people no option but to plea guilty even when this is not their best option. This is due to a multitude of reasons but mainly to receive a lesser charge. For example, a felony and little time in jail may be better than risking multiple felonies and an excessive amount of time in jail.
Plea bargaining raises concerns about the risk of innocent people being wrongfully convicted if they’re persuaded to accept a plea
The Sixth Amendment talks about how everyone has the right to a speedy trial and the right to a public trial. This means that if the person asks for a speedy trial they have to honor it. This prevents them to hold the prisoner for an unreasonably long amount of time without a trial. Another thing is you are entitled to face the witnesses accusing you of your wrongdoing. You can’t have a trial without the witness so you have to have to face the witness at the trial.
Twelve Angry Men is in many ways a love letter to the American legal justice system. We find here eleven men, swayed to conclusions by prejudices, past experience, and short-sightedness, challenged by one man who holds himself and his peers to a higher standard of justice, demanding that this marginalized member of society be given his due process. We see the jurors struggle between the two, seemingly conflicting, purposes of a jury, to punish the guilty and to protect the innocent. It proves, however, that the logic of the American trial-by-jury system does work.