Courtroom Participants Professional Standards Essay

For the purpose of this paper I will be discussing the questions posed in the course syllabus by my professor: * Prosecutorial Misconduct   * Prosecutorial misconduct is best described as illegal acts utilized by a prosecutor to persuade a jury to wrongly convict an individual accused of a crime or securing a severe sentence that may not be justified towards the actual crime. Often times there are occurrences of individuals that are wrongfully convicted, many of these individuals are incarcerated for extended periods of time before their cases are even heard or brought before a jury. * Ineffective assistance by criminal counsel An attorney providing ineffective assistance can be considered as those occurrences when the service provided by an attorney to a defendant proves to be ineffective and in doing so, would be a violation of the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution. Ineffective assistance of counsel is defined in the Supreme Court’s ruling surrounding the landmark case of Strickland v. Washington (1984). In order for a defendant to prove ineffective assistance, the individual would first have to provide proof that demonstrates that his counsel’s performance was inefficient due to the attorney make a large number of errors. Secondly, the defendant must demonstrate that the attorney’s errors directly impacted the defendant’s case prejudicially. In this instance prejudice takes on the meaning of†¦.the trial would have resulted in a different outcome it not for the fact of the attorney’s errors resulting in the sentencing be affected. * Judicial misconduct Judicial misconduct refers to the judge’s conduct and the fact that they are constantly in the view of the public, so they are held to a higher standard in the area of respecting the individuals they interact with on a daily basis as well as all defendants that appear before them in court. * Real life stories My real life story on prosecutorial misconduct focuses on the case of Raymond Towler, who was convicted on the charge of rape of an eleven year old girl and completed 30 years of a sentenced life sentence trying to convince the courts of his innocence. Assistant District Attorney Bill Mason motto of â€Å"win no matter what† resulted in him eliciting testimony that he knew, or had been advised was in accurate. Mason interviewed a police detective who stated in court that Towler never denied raping the eleven year old; however, notes written by the detective himself during his investigation supported Towler’s claims to not having raped the child. In responding to Mason’s questions, a police officer provided testimony that Towler had some form of an indecent communication with the child prior to the rape. Yet police records indicated that it was Chris Towler, Raymond’s brother, who had communication (which was appropriate) with the child. Even with a variety of inconsistencies present, a misled jury still convicted Towler. The mistake the prosecutor made was that he did not utilize sufficient evidence in the case or the fact that Towler wasn’t nowhere near the area or the fact that he never even came in contact with the child, physically or verbally. He also failed to utilize the statement taken by the officer concerning to it being Towler’s brother that was in the area where the act supposedly occurred and had the documented conversation with the child. Without these little pieces of evidence being presented Towler was sentence to life in prison and had spent 30 years incarcerated. How do you replace the time that individual lost? What form of immunity provides protection to the prosecutor pertaining to consequences of misconduct? By the guidelines set forth in the legal dictionary â€Å"Prosecutors are afforded totally immunity for any actions committed before a Grand Jury or a trial. However, while conducting the investigatory phase, only qualified immunity is granted to them. In the case of Kalina v. Fletcher, (1997), it was ruled by the United States Supreme Court that absolute immunity was not a right entitled to prosecutor in regards to his/her actions of allegedly submitting false statements of facts in an Affidavit supporting the application document for an arrest warrant. Consideration of policies regarding merited absolute immunity contains interest of both protection of the prosecutor of harassing litigation that would disrupt the required time or the attention allocated for official duties and the interest towards providing him/her the ability to utilize independent judgment pertaining to decisions on which suits to file and pursue in court. Another example of a real life story pertaining to judicial misconduct would be the case involving Samuel Kent, Mr. Kent served as a judge for over 18 years, but was now being sentenced to three years inside a federal prison for lying about inappropriate conduct towards his staff, of which two provided physic al evidence as to number of years they both endured various assaults by the judge who was for the most part intoxicated. The pattern of sexual misconduct directed at the judges co-workers along with constant violations of workplace intoxication are obvious wrongdoings committed by the judge. It is my opinion that performing elections would be better suited process for judicial selection due to its ability to allow the citizens to make their own choice as to who should represent them through the process of researching them first. While certainly recognizing these acts of misconducts occurring within our criminal justice system, how we propose deter criminal acts on the streets when it’s evident we can not deter it inside of our courts and legal system. Then when you factor in the occurrences of individuals being incarcerated and then being found innocent and having to be compensated through local and state funds that we other citizens are responsible for not to mention the lost of time these individuals lose from their life, friends, and family; which honestly begs the question how could any amount of money replace this time. In my opinion, we as a society really need to make ourselves more aware to the fact that these issues require addressing in our criminal justice system. We really need the accessibility of additional resources required to fill more jobs with truly qualified individuals versus our penchant for sacrificing ourselves to individuals with recognizable names or higher government officials who claim to have or best interest at heart when certain decisions they make appear to be the complete opposite. References Schmalleger, F., & Hall, D. E. (2010). Criminal Law Today. Upper Saddle River, NJ. Siegel, L. J., Schmalleger, F., & Worrall, J. L. (2011). Courts and Criminal Justice in America. Upper Saddle River, NJ. www.Lawlibrary.com http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/immunity