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An inquisitorial system is a legal system in which the court, or a part of the court, is actively involved in investigating the facts of the case. This is distinct from an adversarial system, in which the role of the court is primarily that of an impartial referee between the prosecution and the defense. Inquisitorial systems are used primarily in countries with civil legal systems, such as France and Italy, or legal systems based on Islamic law like Saudi Arabia, rather than in common law systems. It is the prevalent legal system in Continental Europe, Latin America, African countries not formerly under British rule, East Asia, Indochina, Thailand, and Indonesia. Most countries with an inquisitorial system also have some form of civil code as their main source of law.
In jurisprudence, prosecutorial misconduct or prosecutorial overreach is "an illegal act or failing to act, on the part of a prosecutor, especially an attempt to sway the jury to wrongly convict a defendant or to impose a harsher than appropriate punishment." It is similar to selective prosecution. Prosecutors are bound by a sets of rules which outline fair and dispassionate conduct.
The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty. Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which must present compelling evidence to the trier of fact. If the prosecution does not prove the charges true, then the person is acquitted of the charges. The prosecution must in most cases prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If reasonable doubt remains, the accused must be acquitted. The opposite system is a presumption of guilt.
A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal trial against the defendant, an individual accused of breaking the law. Typically, the prosecutor represents the state or the government in the case brought against the accused person.
Discovery, in the law of common law jurisdictions, is a pre-trial procedure in a lawsuit in which each party, through the law of civil procedure, can obtain evidence from the other party or parties by means of discovery devices such as interrogatories, requests for production of documents, requests for admissions and depositions. Discovery can be obtained from non-parties using subpoenas. When a discovery request is objected to, the requesting party may seek the assistance of the court by filing a motion to compel discovery.
In the legal system of the United States, a Brady disclosure consists of exculpatory or impeaching information and evidence that is material to the guilt or innocence or to the punishment of a defendant. The term comes from the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, in which the Supreme Court ruled that suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to a defendant who has requested it violates due process.
A miscarriage of justice occurs when an unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.
Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that established that the prosecution must turn over all evidence that might exonerate the defendant to the defense. The prosecution failed to do so for Brady, and he was convicted. Brady challenged his conviction, arguing it had been contrary to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide-ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Large portions of the act were repealed and replaced by the Sentencing Act 2020.
Actual innocence is a special standard of review in legal cases to prove that a charged defendant did not commit the crimes that they were accused of, which is often applied by appellate courts to prevent a miscarriage of justice.
Shareef Cousin is an African-American man from New Orleans who was convicted of the first-degree murder of Michael Gerardi in 1996 and sentenced to death as a juvenile in Louisiana. At age 17, he became the youngest condemned convict to be put on death row in Louisiana, and one of the youngest in the United States.
Inculpatory evidence is evidence that shows, or tends to show, a person's involvement in an act, or evidence that can establish guilt. In criminal law, the prosecution has a duty to provide all evidence to the defense, whether it favors the prosecution's case or the defendant's case. Evidence that tends to show a person's innocence is considered exculpatory evidence.
Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610 (1976), is a United States Supreme Court case regarding the Due Process rights of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 (1995), is a United States Supreme Court case that held that a prosecutor has an affirmative duty to disclose evidence favorable to a defendant pursuant to Brady v. Maryland and United States v. Bagley.
Evidence-based prosecution refers to a collection of techniques utilized by prosecutors in domestic violence cases to convict abusers without the cooperation of an alleged victim. It is widely practiced within the American legal system by specialized prosecutors and state's attorneys and relies on utilizing a variety of evidence to prove the guilt of an abuser with limited or adverse participation by the abuser's victim, or even no participation at all.
In United States criminal procedure, the Federal government and certain states have reciprocal discovery laws that compel defendants to disclose some information to prosecutors before trial. Within the federal court system, this material is referred to as reverse Jencks Act material, after the United States Supreme Court case which established the principle, Jencks v. United States.
Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the prosecution's failure to inform the jury that a witness had been promised not to be prosecuted in exchange for his testimony was a failure to fulfill the duty to present all material evidence to the jury, and constituted a violation of due process, requiring a new trial. This is the case even if the failure to disclose was a matter of negligence and not intent. The case extended the Court's holding in Brady v. Maryland, requiring such agreements to be disclosed to defense counsel. As a result of this case, the term Giglio material is sometimes used to refer to any information pertaining to deals that witnesses in a criminal case may have entered into with the government.
Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 (1959), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the knowing use of false testimony by a prosecutor in a criminal case violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, even if the testimony affects only the credibility of the witness and does not directly relate to the innocence or guilt of the defendant.
United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667 (1985), was a Supreme Court of the United States case that established the standard for materiality under Brady v. Maryland.
United States v. Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622 (2002), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that Brady v. Maryland did not require prosecutors to disclose impeachment evidence during plea bargaining.
References
- ↑ Lehman, Jeffrey; Phelps, Shirelle (2005). West's Encyclopedia of American Law, Vol. 7 (2 ed.). Detroit: Thomson/Gale. p. 286. ISBN 9780787663742.
- ↑ "Plea Bargains: Necessary Tool, Or Cop-Out?". NPR. Talk of the Nation. Retrieved 20 November 2021., Quote from Prof. Laurie Levenson: "Prof. SCHECK: ... that didn't commit the crime. But I think the problem is that under the law now, number one, prosecutors are not obligated to provide exculpatory evidence to grand juries who are considering whether or not to indict a defendant. And number two, there's no real requirement at all that prosecutors disclose exculpatory evidence to defendants prior to the time they decide to plead."
- ↑ § 160 (2) Strafprozessordnung(StPO)[Code of Criminal Procedure]of 2021-09-14
- ↑ James W. H. McCord, Sandra L. McCord (2001). Criminal Law And Procedure For The Paralegal: A Systems Approach. Thomson Delmar Learning. p. 454. ISBN 0-7668-1965-5.
- ↑ John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg, and Guyora Binder, Criminal Law - Cases and Materials 4 (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, 7th ed. 2012).
- ↑ Garner, Bryan A. (1999) [1891]. "Exculpatory evidence". Black's Law Dictionary (7th ed.). St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing. p. 577. ISBN 0-314-22864-0.
exculpatory evidence Evidence tending to establish a criminal defendant's innocence ● The prosecution has a duty to disclose exculpatory evidence in its possession or control when the evidence may be material to the outcome of the case.