CJA/224 Version 3 / 1
Week Three Read Me First
CRIMINAL PROCESSES: ARREST, Pre-TRIAL, and TRIAL
Introduction
Week Three investigates the legal process and what constitutes a crime.You discuss arrest, pretrial, and trial procedures. These procedures constitute the due process of the law. The due-process protections help ensure fairness, equity, and justice in the determination of whether the defendant has the requisite actus reus and mens rea as the prosecutor has charged.
This Week in Relation to the Course
Before an individual can be arrested, the requisite level of proof must exist.If the police fail to meet this threshold when making an arrest, evidence could be excluded from trial or the charges could be dismissed.Because punishment is not imposed until after conviction, an individual is entitled to bail in noncapital cases provided that he or she is not a flight risk or a danger to the community.To ensure fairness, the defense is entitled to relevant discovery.The failure to provide relevant discovery could result in dismissal of the case.
Plea bargaining permits the processing of a large number of defendants without the necessity of a trial.This furthers the crime control model objectives of efficiency and economy.However, if the resulting sentence is too lenient or too severe, the fairness of this procedure is called into question, thus implicating due-process-model concerns.
Though most defendants plead guilty, the trial remains an important procedural safeguard to help identify those who are guilty and those who are not.Because the prosecutor has the burden of both proof and production, the prosecutor has the advantage of primacy and recency; providing the opening statement first and the closing argument last.The rules of direct and cross examination are designed to discover the truth and the rules of evidence are designed to protect an individual from being convicted without adequate proof.
Before the courts can get involved in any criminal matter, a law must be broken.Crimes are either commissions or omissions of the statutory laws.To be a crime, an act requires three important elements: actus reus, mens rea, and concordance between the two.Actus reus refers to the guilty act; mens rea refers to the state of mind.Both must generally be present for a crime to have occurred, except in strict liability offenses.
Sometimes people commit acts for which they should not be punished, because their actions lacked mens rea or because their actions were not voluntary.Under the law, people may not be guilty of a crime due to the presence of legally recognized justifications for their actions or because they were not legally responsible for their actions.
Discussion of a Key Point, Thread, or Objective
The succinct, yet eloquent, statement provided by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution that “no person… shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” has led the courts to debate and continue to rule on due process for decades.There is no universally agreed upon formal definition of due process.The concept of due process embodies the idea of fairness and protection of the individual against the power of the state.Due process emphasizes the public nature of the U.S. legal system, or the idea that your government is accountable to you, and that public scrutiny of the legal process is desirable and necessary for equality and justice.
The various procedures employed to establish guilt help provide fairness and assurance that the eventual outcome is correct.The adversarial system is designed to pair two parties against each other in an attempt to reveal the truth.Sometimes the adversarial system can frustrate this purpose, however, when the parties seek to win irrespective of the truth.
Practical Applications and Questions
- What is the adversarial system?
- What is dueprocess?
- What is the standard required for arrest?
- What is the standard required for pretrial release?
- What is the difference and similarity between a grand jury hearing and a preliminary hearing?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of plea bargaining?
- What is a speedy and public trial?
- What is the order of trial? How does the order of proceedings help to facilitate due process?
- What is double jeopardy?When does it apply, and when does it not apply?
- What are the elements of a crime?
- What is actus reus?
- What is mens rea?
- What legal defenses exist to justify or excuse one’s alleged involvement in activity that is otherwise unlawful?
How Tools, Readings, and Simulations Help Solidify Concepts
The text readings provide the conceptual outline of the procedures involved in the criminal justice system, from the arrest of the defendant through the trial verdict.The Electronic Reserve Readings provide a closer examination of the processes of discovery and pleabargaining and examine how the evolving access to information has affected the meaning of criminal guilt.
The CJi Interactive activities provide real-world perspective to complement the perspective of the faculty.The simulation on the steps in the trial processa way to demonstrate your comprehension of the procedures involved in the criminal justice systemthrough application.
Use of federal or state criminal jury instructions, which are accessible online, can provide you with definitions and comparisons of crimes between states and the federal government.
Summary
Due process is intended to provide protection from governmental infringement on legal rights to life, liberty, and property. From arrest through verdict, proceedings are in place to assure fairness and to help guarantee a just outcome.
For an act to be considered a crime, it must first be prohibited by law and then must be legally punishable.Every crime has three elements that must be met.Legal defenses can excuse crime due to the lack of mens rea or a lack of actus reus.