Initial Appearance, Arraignment, Preliminary Hearings, Grand Jury Review
Initial Appearance, Arraignment, Preliminary Hearings, Grand Jury Review
After the arrest of an accused individual also referred to as the defendant for the allegations of having committed a crime, the individual is still a suspect at the time of arrest and for the person to be proven guilty or not then the person has to go through certain legal proceedings. Immediately the defendant is arrested by the police he or she has to be booked by the police. This involves taking details of the person’s fingerprints, photographs and finally put into a holding cell where the person remains until the initial appearance (Smartt, 2006). The initial appearance is the initial proceeding in front of a judge. The police can also release the person on bail until this first appearance when the defendant is obliged to report for the initial hearing. The purpose of the initial appearance is to inform the defendant of her legal rights and also to prevent coercive interrogation by police.
Arraignment is a part of the criminal proceedings where the defendant is called before a court and at this stage the defendant is informed of the charges levied against him or her based on the complaint, indictment, information or any document. At this stage, the defendant enters a plea of the charges and confirms whether he is guilty or not. In some courts, it’s at this proceeding level that the court determines whether to release the defendant on his recognizance or set bail for him (Smartt, 2006).
The preliminary hearing, on the other hand, is also termed as evidentiary hearing or the probable cause hearing. It occurs after the filing of a criminal complaint by the prosecutor it aims at answering the following questions. The first is whether the alleged crime occurred within the jurisdiction of the court and secondly whether there exists any probable reason or cause to believe the defendant committed or was involved in the crime at this level the defendant may seek the assistance of the counsel.
Grand jury review is different from preliminary hearing, most of the courts use the preliminary hearing before the criminal trials instead of using the grand juries, and they are adversarial in nature. The grand juries play the role of determining whether there exists any evidence or a possible cause for indicting the suspect, it differs from the preliminary hearing which is open to the public, and it involves the judge and a lawyer. It is not the case with the grand juries other than the prosecutor (Haugen & Musser, 2009).
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