I attended the Circuit Court at 140 Blountville Bypass Blountville, TN on April 24th, 2014. I sat in on Judge Robert Montgomery’s court. Judge Montgomery started court promptly at 9:00 a.m. After going through the metal detectors, I asked the officer working the metal dictator if I could ask to sit in on a criminal court that was going on that morning. He then directed me to the printed docket on the table in the waiting area. The docket is the official schedule of proceedings in lawsuits pending in a court of law. Courtroom 1 had seven pages of cases ranging from violations of probation to rape of a child and Courtroom 2 had one jury trial case of a vehicular homicide that finished the day before. I walked into the administration office and asked if I could get a copy of the docket for when I sit in on court that day for my Legal Process class. I waited until the bailiff called everyone in, and I went in as well and took a seat in the front row in the middle next to another classmate. After waiting a few minutes the bailiff tells everyone to rise while Judge Robert Montgomery entered the courtroom to begin the proceedings.
The first few proceedings of the day were postponements and resets which were short in length. The first interesting case was David Allen Holt, case number S63108, was charged with aggravated burglary and theft over $1,000. Aggravated burglary is a crime that involves using a weapon while committing another crime against property. I overheard the defendant’s father talking about how that had left the Augusta, GA Burn Center earlier in the day to prevent a failure to appear that would increase his punishment. Holt had severe burns from his neck to his waist and around 70% of his body. The judge was attempting to...
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...phen M. Wallace. Judge Montgomery sentenced him to 11 months 29 days with 9 months in jail and the rest of his sentence on probation.
The last case I watched before I had to go was of Jeffery Lynn Combs, case number S61248; he had 18 felony counts of forgery and theft. The court considers him a career criminal with a 20 page criminal record rap sheet. In this case he was writing checks in his deceased mother’s name in excess of over 10 thousand dollars. With all the evidence of the checks stacking up against him he decided accepted the guilty plea. Even with his legal team of Amy Hinkle and Stephen M. Wallace he was destined to have an extended sentence. He was sentenced to 6 years to 12 years, spending a minimum of 45% of the time in jail. The court is forcing him to pay restitution or compensation to the state of over $10,000. His arraignment is set for June 6th.
sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. The case against him was largely
US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Case Name:WENDT V HOST INTERNATIONAL GEORGE WENDT, an individual; JOHN RATZENBERGER, an individual, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. No. 96-55243 HOST INTERNATIONAL, INC., a Delaware corporation, D.C. No. Defendant-Appellee, CV-93-00142-R and ORDER PARAMOUNT PICTURES, CORPORATION, a Delaware corporation, Defendant-Intervenor.
The presentence investigation report in question outlined Smith's previous record, which included twelve juvenile entries. The sentencing judge imposed the sentence because Smith's record included seven prior felonies and three misdemeanors, and he viewed the sentence as
The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals set a limit that each criminal defense attorney can take 150 felony cases per year, but “caseloads of 500, 600, 800, or more are common” (“Five Problems”). With that, criminal defense attorneys are forced to triage or reject cases, leaving potential clients to go to court without representation. If the defendant does have a public attorney, their defense is unprepared and vulnerable to make mistakes when working out a reasonable sentence. In one of his cases, Jones and his client accepted a deal with the prosecution for a three year sentence for stealing locks. Upon further investigation, the prosecution discovered that they made a mistake in calculating the minimum sentence – Jones’s client should have only served “366 days,” but it was already too late (Eckholm).
The court I went to was Kew Gardens Criminal court. The section I went to was the arraignment for misdemeanors. I spent two hours observing cases, and within that two hours, I saw 16 cases. All the case took place in the same routine, with the court clerk calling the defendant to the stand. The defense attorney and prosecutor are there with them. The defense is then advised of the charges against them and they enter a plea. Of the 16 cases, 43% were African-American, 37% were Hispanic and only 12% were white. Males made up 87% of the cases and the female made up only 12%. Most of these offenders were young men and women in their 20s. The crimes they were charged with ranged from class one misdemeanors, which include burglary, DUI, possession of a weapon and possession of drugs. to class two misdemeanors, which include prostitution, physical assaults etc. Many of these offenders were sentenced to jail time or were returning back to Rikers Island for three to twelve months. Only a few were giving fines, ranging from a $1000 to $3000. Others were released from custody but were due back in court. Almost all the offenders were given a mandatory surcharge.
Courtroom 302 is one of the busiest courtrooms in the United States and that isn’t always the case, but the processes are still the same. According to our textbook, (Neubauer, D.W. & Fradella, H.F., 2017, p. 13) “The overwhelming majority of crimes involve burglary and theft.” Which Courtroom 309 gives many cases that involved some sort of theft or robbery, like the case that mentioned earlier. It also gives a great representation of the flaws that our criminal justice system
A whirlwind of controversy arose in November 2002, when Judge Ted Poe, ruled that PBS’s Frontline could film jury deliberations in the trial of Cedric Harrison, 17, who faces the death penalty for allegedly killing a man during a car-jacking. In validating his ruling, Poe held that “cameras in courts keep the system honest” and are an important tool for civic education.1 Poe approved Frontline’s proposal, in which an unobtrusive ceiling camera would be used and no full-time cameraman would be necessary. Frontline had planned to edit the deliberations and broadcast them approximately one year following the verdict as part of a two-to-three hour documentary that would spotlight Harris County, whose juries have sentenced more people to death than juries in any other county in the U.S.2
sentenced to 63 years in prison. Once again, his term was reduced, and he moved
The court system includes the judges, jury, prosecutors and defense attorneys. The Attorneys convince the suspects to take plea bargains, the judges are sometimes unfair in the decisions they make, and the prosecutors overlook exculpatory evidence. Picking cotton shows in detail some common errors of the court system. During Ronald Cotton 's first trial, His Attorney, Phil Moseley, tried to bring a memory expert to testify on the unreliability of memory but the judge denied his request. After Ronald 's case was overturned by the supreme court, he got a new trial in another court which had even more problems and bias. First, there was racial prejudice during the jury selection. “Four black people from the community got called in for jury duty. The judge himself dismissed one of them and then Mr turner made sure none of the rest sat on my jury” Ronald cotton stated. Because he was black, the four jurors were dismissed and he was left with an all white jury and two white Alternates. Second, the judge “Held something called a “voir dire” hearing, which Phil explained meant he would have to put up all the evidence about Poole in front of the Judge, but not the Jury”(129). Also, Ronald Cotton 's defense attorney explained to the judge the parallelism between Bobby Poole 's case and the rape Ronald Cotton was charged with. Despite the weak physical evidence against Ronald Cotton, the
In California, the courts are split up in two systems: federal and state. The federal court system, which coerce federal laws, rules and management, applies and interprets the Constitution of the U.S. The state court systems enforce laws, rules, and regulations of a given state, and applies and interprets the state’s own Constitution. California has two state courts, Trial and Appellate. In each county, there is one trial court. The judge, and occasionally the jury, “hears testimony and evidence and decides a case by applying the law to the facts of the case.” The court deals with all criminal and civil cases as well as appeals of small claims and misdemeanor cases.
According to the online dictionary a courthouse is a building in which local courts of law conduct trials and other business pertaining to the justice system. As I entered the dull grey building my heart was beating fast and my adrenaline was flowing; I was feeling frighten as I walked through the swirling doors. It was my first time entering a courthouse and I was full of anxiety, because I had no idea where to go, who to talk to and how to get there. At the entrance of the building there were four officers present; one female and three males, security devices such as a metal detectors and an x-ray machines together with blue containers were used to put my personal items and check my body. This is done as a precaution against violence
400 dollars to afford a guarantor. He did not have enough money to afford either of them. He was on the verge of pleading guilty and get a 60-day sentence. It was a tough decision considering he had another charge for weapons. He already had lost his job. Adding another charge to his record will be hard for him gain employment.
The courts have the function of giving the public a chance to present themselves whether to prosecute or defend themselves if any disputes against them rise. It is known to everyone that a court is a place where disputes can be settled while using the right and proper procedures. In the Criminal court is the luxury of going through a tedious process of breaking a law. Once you have been arrested and have to go to court because of the arrest, you now have a criminal case appointed against you. The court is also the place where a just, fair and unbiased trial can be heard so that it would not cause any disadvantage to either of the party involved in the dispute. The parties are given a chance to represent themselves or to choose to have a legal representative, which is mostly preferred by many.
I went to the Cobb County Superior Court on November 19, 2013. I already knew what a court room would look like because I had to appear in court as a witness. I walked into the courthouse, and had to go through what felt like airport security. After the security walkthrough was over, I asked one of the officers if it was ok for me to just walk into a courtroom. I’m an extremely shy person, and the thought of walking into the courtroom after the case had already begun was nerve-wrecking. He told me to just walk in and take a seat in the pews. The case I was observing was being seen by Judge Reuben Green, so I rode the elevator to the fifth floor, and walked to his court room. I sat o...
Comparing to the civil courthouse, there were more people in this criminal courthouse. There are a judge, four court stuffs, about 16 juries, two police officers, defendant, his lawyer, King County Medical Officer and about 10 audiences in this case. The atmosphere in this courthouse was more serious than the previous civil courthouse. The name of this case is Regency Centers, L.P. v. Hodges (Chamber – Ruling), the case number is 14-1-03783-6, the judge of this trial is Judie Spector, and the defendant is Richard Parenteau. This is a murder case happened in 2014. In this trial, the defendant’s lawyer kept asking King County Medical officers details about this case. It was not the first trial, so we did not understand the story about this case. However, we searched this case’s story on the Internet when we went back home.