The United States Courts- Chapter 5
Caylee Anthony’s murder takes place in Orange County, Florida in this case; courts in Orange County heard the case. In the case of appeals due to the charge of murder, Judges in the Appellate courts in Florida will listen to the case. If the Jury finds the defendant guilty and imposes the death penalty, the defendant has the opportunity of challenging the sentence in the federal courts. The issue describes the complexity of the court system in America. United States has close to 17,000 courthouses with elaborate architecture. The modern courthouses don a faceless structure due to lack inspiration in architecture. Other courthouses are at the backyard of garages, remote areas, or funeral parlor due to tranquil environments. American courts have two branches the federal and the state courts. The state courts include trial courts of limited jurisdiction, trial courts of general jurisdiction, the intermediate court of appeals, and the Appellate courts. The federal courts consist of magistrate, District, Circuit court of appeals, and the Supreme Court.
The fragmentation of the criminal justice – Chapter 6
Some Americans believe on the system approach that dominates contemporary thinking concerning criminal justice. As it happens, others believe on the utility of the conceptualization. Activities of the police and the courts fail to work in coherent and organized framework. A non-system in the criminal justice system depicts fragmentation. Fragmentation attributes every component in the criminal justice system. The police sector comprises of more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies that vary with traditions and cooperation antagonism. The concept of fragmentation extends to the courts due to involvement of many activities. The staff of the courthouses such as clerks, prosecutors, public defenders, bailiffs, judges, and court reporters works in other government agencies. The staff in the courthouses consists of private citizens that the act to influence government actions. The fragmentation in the three components of the non-system in the criminal justice has the compound of decentralization of the government. The American government adopts the principle of federalism to distribute power between the national and state agencies. The state governments create the local units such as cities and counties. Every level of government has courts, law enforcement, and courts. The decentralization leads to complexity in the American criminal justice system. The ruling of a criminal issue depends on the nature of the law violated by several prosecutors to bring a charge to the defendant.
Defense Attorneys – Chapter 7
A government attorney represents the defendant that does not have the ability of hiring private attorneys. A person acts as a public defender to ensure satisfactions of rights of all the defendants in the counsel. A person charged with a crime can have a person to represent them such as a lawyer in a counsel. The Supreme Court holds that constitutionally, criminal defendants have the entitlement of the appointment of a lawyer in the due process of a fair trial. The exception to the rule includes a special circumstance that has limited applicability and people charged with crimes against the federal law instead of state courts. Criminal involved in criminal charges that necessitate routine trials without the need of counsel. The rule changed after the judicial precedent in Gideon v. Wainwright that translated to creation of the public defender in the entire nation.
Judicial Selection – Critical Thinking
The method of selection of judges in America has remained controversial since the Revolutionary War. Kings in Britain selected colonial judges while retaining much power on them. In the early 1800s, the state of Indiana and Georgia adopted the popular selection to appoint the lower courts judges. During the Civil War, it was held that the election of Judges had turned to the political machine since the method of selection led to incompetence and corruption of the selected judges. Later on, states chose to use nonpartisan elections to choose judges. The ideology of this option lies in that parties cannot control the judges while the electorate had difficulty in making decisions without the party affiliations. The method of selecting the judge's varies from one state to another in America.
