Essay about CJ 305

Submitted By army_mp1999
Words: 1823
Pages: 8

Criminal trials having many different aspects that need to be accomplished before there is even any thought of a trial. Having you stuff in line to make sure you do the best job you can takes many many hours, weeks, months, and sometimes even years. People who are not involved in the main parts of a trial and investigations don't understand the magnitude of the time and effort put in by them people. Lawyers, police, and investigators, put many years in to become proficient in there career and do the best job they can do and that is something that people over look sometimes. In order to be great at a job like that you must put your career first and solely concentrate on your career and sometimes that means putting your life on hold and making your career your life and main goal in life. Many things happen before a trial can begin including evidence proving or disproving the case. Finding the defendant who committed the crime. Doing many many interviews of witnesses and other people involved on both sides of the crime. According to Lange and Nimsger (2009), “… authentication requires establishing evidence’s integrity in addition to its identity. Integrity refers to the soundness of evidence; for instance, that a document has not been altered or corrupted” (p. 143). This is to prove that the evidence being used for trial is real, unchanged, and the exact same evidence that was collected originally. There are several ways that show how authentication or identification of physical evidence can be accomplished. This can include testimony of a witness that has first-hand knowledge of the crime, and evidence in question. Next, having a person that is not an expert, such as a spouse, that is familiar with a person’s handwriting through a source other than the litigation process to identify handwritten evidence. Also, allowing the jury or experts to compare the object to an example of the object, and letting them decide the authenticity of the object in question. Next are the distinctive characteristics or surrounding circumstances of the evidence that can be verified by a witness. Voice identification that can be learned from firsthand hearing of the person’s voice or through an electronic or mechanical transmission can be used as evidence, like using an answering machine message.
The six ways that photographic, recorded, and computer generated evidence can be used in a trial include being able to demonstrate a theory of the events that occurred during the crime, show the scene of the crime or other pertinent areas, record the behavior of a witness, to document the surveillance of a person, to record identification procedures, police lineups, and the act of identify along with recording the situation of a traffic stop. Computer generated evidence can be used as evidence on the suspected theory of how the events occurred during the time in question. Photographs can be used to show the scene of the crime, and other evidence.
Recorded videos can be used to show behavior, such as in dashboard cameras, document surveillance, show the identification procedures including police lineups, and the witness identifying the suspect.
According to Adler, Mueller and Laufer (2006), “The Court took one additional step by requiring that from here on, as soon as a suspect is taken into custody, the officer must advise the arrestee of his or her rights under the Constitution…”(p. 208). The requirements for Miranda is that the officer goes over each of these rights, including the right to remain silent, that anything that is said by the individual can be used against them in a court of law, that the individual has the right to an attorney and that if they are unable to afford an attorney, one can be appointed to represent them. The definition of custody as it relates to Miranda is an individual that is not under arrest during an interrogating should be able to feel free to leave at any time without answering the