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The importance of prosecutors
The importance of prosecutors
The importance of prosecutors
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If I were a defense attorney defending a man against a charge of burglary but he does not remember if he had done anything because he was drunk that night and on the stand when I ask him about that night when the burglary had been committed and he responds he was home watching television that night I would let him finish his story and take him off the stand. As a defense attorney I don’t believe I am participating in perjury because although I know my client has inconsistent stories I am unaware if he is lying. In this situation I would take a break to speak to my client and call to his attention his inconsistent stories and inform him that he has taken an oath to tell the truth and if he violated that oath he will commit perjury. I will then ask the defendant if he had recovered his memory from that night because he not only responded that he was watching a television show but he also described the sow and plotline. I don’t think my client had committed perjury because I don’t know the truth and he might have …show more content…
If most of the defense attorneys had lost their cases with this judge with this prosecutor but won most of the cases with another judge and prosecutor I will then request a new judge in order to provide my defendant a fair trial. This decision will create animosity and if the judge refuses it could jeopardize the outcome of the case however, I will prove that there is something suspicious going on between the prosecutor and the judge because I will have the past defense attorneys to defend my stand. If most of the defense attorneys had no problem with the judge and the prosecutor in their case then I will just suspect that they are just having a normal dinner without their
The use of eyewitness statements and testimony’s can be a great source of information, but can also lead to wrongful convictions. Due to eyewitness testimony, innocent people are convicted of crimes they have not committed. This is why the wording of a question is important to consider when interviewing witnesses. Due to the fact that eyewitness testimony can be the most concrete evidence in an investigation, witnesses may feel they are helping an officer by giving them as much information as possible, therefore they may tell them information that is not entirely true, just to please them. This is why there are advantages and disadvantages to using open and close ended questioning at different durations of an interview. The way you word a question may impact the memory of a witness, this is because a person cannot completely memorize the exact occurrences of an event.
The judge was more interested in making the character of Vinny look bad. Vinny was not ready to appear in front of a judge of any kind. There are judges out there that probably do hold lawyers to a very high standard. It did seem a little extreme in the movie. The judge should have spoken with the defendants to make them aware of the lack of qualifications of their lawyer Vinny seemed to have. A real Judge would have tried to make it clear to the Defendants about the inability of Vinny to represent. In a way the movie kind of showed that Vinny may not be the best choice of lawyer, when the Judge started talking down to Vinny.
The job of a criminal lawyer is quite difficult. Whether on the defense or the prosecution, you must work diligently and swiftly in order to persuade the jury. Some lawyers play dirty and try to get their client off of the hook even though they are guilty without a doubt. Even though the evidence is all there, the prosecution sometimes just can’t get the one last piece of the puzzle to make the case stick and lock the criminal up. Such is the case Orenthal James Simpson.
The people directly involved with this case are Judge Lance Ito, the prosecution lawyers, Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, the defense lawyers, Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro and Robert Blasier , the jury and the defendant, O.J. Simpson. The families of the victims have also been present in the courtroom, as well as other spectators and news media. This case has heard one hundred and twenty witnesses over a nine month period.
False confessions are receiving more public attention now that people are speaking out about having to serve jail time for a crime they did not commit. 2015 was a year to remember for false confessions starting in January when a man was released after serving 21 years in prison. The protocols that interrogators are trained to follow are dangerous because they allow investigators to have complete influence on innocent people to make false confessions.
Depending on what study is read, the incidence of false confession is less than 35 per year, up to 600 per year. That is a significant variance in range, but no matter how it is evaluated or what numbers are calculated, the fact remains that false confessions are a reality. Why would an innocent person confess to a crime that she did not commit? Are personal factors, such as age, education, and mental state, the primary reason for a suspect to confess? Are law enforcement officers and their interrogation techniques to blame for eliciting false confessions? Regardless of the stimuli that lead to false confessions, society and the justice system need to find a solution to prevent the subsequent aftermath.
The question of what constitutes morality is often asked by philosophers. One might wonder why morality is so important, or why many of us trouble ourselves over determining which actions are moral actions. Mill has given an account of the driving force behind our questionings of morality. He calls this driving force “Conscience,” and from this “mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to do what violates our standard of right,” we have derived our concept of morality (Mill 496). Some people may practice moral thought more often than others, and some people may give no thought to morality at all. However, morality is nevertheless a possibility of human nature, and a very important one. We each have our standards of right and wrong, and through the reasoning of individuals, these standards have helped to govern and shape human interactions to what it is today. No other beings except “rational beings,” as Kant calls us, are able to support this higher capability of reason; therefore, it is important for us to consider cases in which this capability is threatened. Such a case is lying. At first, it seems that lying should not be morally permissible, but the moral theories of Kant and Mill have answered both yes and no on this issue. Furthermore, it is difficult to decide which moral theory provides a better approach to this issue. In this paper, we will first walk through the principles of each moral theory, and then we will consider an example that will explore the strengths and weaknesses of each theory.
Psychological research and application have established that it is not only people with learning disability or major mental illness that are susceptible to make false confessions. In order for a confession to be false, a person must either confess to a crime that he or she is completely innocent of or overstate his or her involvement in the crime. False confessions can be either voluntary or coerced. Although it is methodologically difficult to establish the frequency of false confessions, anecdotal evidence such as self-reports and case studies indicate that reported cases are only the ‘tip of the iceberg’. It appears that young people are particularly vulnerable and often make false confessions in order to protect others. Standardized psychological tests have been devised in order to assess personality factors such as suggestibility and compliance that render some people more vulnerable than others. The reason people make false confessions is typically due to a combination of factors such as psychological vulnerabilities, nature of the custodial confinement and the police interviewing tactics. Notorious cases of false confessions which have lead to the wrongful convictions of innocent people subsequently spending years in prison represent some of the worst cases of miscarriage of justice in Britain. One such cases, that of Engin Raghip of the so-called ‘Tottenham three’ will be discussed in the context of admissibility of psychological evidence in order to demonstrate how the judiciary has increasingly come to accept the psychological notion that most people, under certain circumstances, are susceptible to making false confessions.
Most importantly, a defense lawyer can guide one through the overwhelming challenges that present themselves within the criminal court system. Knowing which steps to take and how to most successfully take them could mean the difference between an undeserved jail sentence and a possible dismissal of all charges. One should never leave the fate of a criminal court case to chance or to an overworked public defender's office when a criminal defense lawyer is available to protect your Constitutional
Under state law, perjury is defined as knowingly giving a false statement before a court of law, after taking an oath. However, what happens when an eyewitness unknowingly presents false information during trial? By law, this is legal and according to the Innocence Project, 73% of overturned convictions due to DNA testing were based on false eyewitness accounts. False eyewitness accounts are caused by a variety of effects related to memory distortion/manipulation; one of the most common being the misidentification effect. Nevertheless, there are precautionary measures that can be taken in order to preserve eyewitness memory and improve eyewitness identification all together.
Therefore, false confessions have become so problematic that it is has been putting innocent individuals in danger of their freedom. As well, many wrongful conviction cases are viewed in the Innocence Project which “documents that approximately 25% of it’s cases of post-conviction DNA exonerations involved false confessions” (Henkel et. al., 2008, p. 556). If false confessions is such a big issue, why has anyone not study the ways to prevent them? Police-induced tactics are constantly used behind closed doors in interrogation rooms to coerce the individual to confess. Although, many jurors “do not view the use of minimization tactics used during interrogation as coercive” (Appleby, Hasel, & Kassin, 2013, p. 117). Thus, jurors can be unaware
The 20th century brought about the invention of the polygraph test, a machine that monitors for specific physiological signs of deception. Once people realized that with deception comes certain bodily signs, the stage was set for the invention of the polygraph. Once invented, it was and still is somewhat controversial. Yet in its very early form, it influenced American history by helping to bring about a momentous Supreme Court decision regarding the admissibility of scientific evidence in the courtroom.
I do not know of anyone who wants to be known as Pinocchio, the wooden boy who lies and in a result, makes his nose grow bigger. As an old proverb says, honesty is the best policy. I agree with being honest at all times. First, telling the truth to me, is always the right thing. When I catch someone in a lie, I just think to myself, what has come up of this world? A person’s truths and lies prove who that person is, and what that person is capable of. Second, people can earn a great deal of respect and trust from telling the truth. Now, people trust their “gut feeling”, but someone’s “gut feeling” should always be truthful. Respect is something that is earned, and at sometimes, given to people who do the things that they are supposed to do for themselves and for others. Last, most people were taught to tell the truth at a very young age. A truth is
The judge was a middle-aged male who looked intimidating and seemed to be well respected. To my surprise, we did not have to stand up when he entered the room. After the judge came out I assumed the jury would follow quickly after. However I quickly learned that there would be no jury for this particular trial. After a few minutes, the handcuffed defendant entered the room wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. He was a middle-aged, African-American male who was involved in a narcotic conspiracy case. In addition to the defendant a probation officer, the prosecutor and the defendant’s lawyer were also present. Aside from me, my classmate and a student from Georgetown the defendant’s wife and sister were in the
The defense lawyers and prosecutors share common characteristics as officers of a court of law. However, when it comes to professional ethics are a world apart in actual prosecutions. Both groups have very specific ethical responsibilities to their clients, the administration of justice and the court itself. During a trial, these differences in the ethical obligations define the motives and actions of both parties. The defense attorney is ethically obligated to yield to the decisions of their customers. Unless the customer is clear that she wants her lawyer to do what they see fit, a defense lawyer can only offer advice and suggest a course of action (Keyes, 2014). Plaintiff attorneys on the other side have full autonomy. They can take your case in any direction they please and can implement their own strategies for the courtroom in an attempt to obtain a conviction. While your client is technically the people in your area of practice, the public has no voice in the actions of a prosecutor and an attorney is not ethically obligated to comply with your preferences.