Parties

Trial By Jury

The seeds of the jury system were sowed in common law England. From England, the jury migrated to America. While the jury has taken root and prospered in American soil, it has withered in its original home.

In the United States, the right to jury trial is guaranteed by Article III and the Sixth, Seventh, and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution. As a result, the jury is largely immune from legislative abolition.

A trial involves public examination of a legal issue in a court of law. A jury is a group of supposedly impartial citizens selected to determine the facts and sit in judgment of a defendant in a trial. The jury, at the end of the trial, reaches a verdict of gulity or innocent, which determines whether the defendant is freed or punished.

In a trial, the term party refers to an individual, organization, or government that participates in the trial and has an interest in the trial's outcome. The main parties to a lawsuit are the plaintiff and the defendant. In a criminal trial, the plaintiff is the government, and the defendant is an individual accused of a crime. In a criminal trial, the government is represented by an attorney, known as the prosecutor, who seeks to prove the guilt of the defendant.

The prosecutor is an elected official whose jurisdiction is determined by county or city boundaries and is known as the county or city attorney. In many other states, this official is known as the district attorney. The county attorney represents the government's response to crime and his/her prosecutorial services are paid by the county. In some large cities, the city attorney handles misdemeanor crime and the county attorney prosecutes felony level matters, while in other regions, both felony and misdemeanor crimes are prosecuted by the county attorney.

The prosecutor coordinates the government's response to crime, from the initial screening, when the prosecutor decides whether or not to charge a case, all the way through sentencing.

In the United States, the prosecutor is probably the most important decision-maker in the criminal process. The impetus to begin a criminal investigation usually emanates from a private complainant, and it is ordinarily the police who conduct the bulk of investigations; but the determinations whether to charge a suspect, what to charge him with, and what sanctions eventually to impose are made by the prosecutor. The existence of broad prosecutorial discretion is still widely accepted as part of the U.S. legal tradition. Several key features of the U.S. system of criminal justice are indeed dependent on prosecutors' freedom of action. Without it, selective enforcement of criminal laws and diversion of minor offenders from the criminal process would be impossible, and plea bargaining would be likely to disappear.

The prosecutor's duties include:

- Assessing the investigative reports to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to file a criminal complaint against a suspect or whether a complaint should be denied (the lack of sufficient evidence or the unavailability of witnesses are often factors for denying a criminal complaint);

- Notifying victims of criminal charges, victims' rights, the availability of services, court dates, plea agreement, pre-trial diversion, changes in court schedules, and the date, time and place of sentencing;

- Witness trial preparation and management.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-07