Criminal justice system overview and structure

TV Criminal Procedure

Fluffy, unrealistic, demeaning, biased against the routine nature of many of the professional activities that can be expected if one chooses a criminal justice career: This is what reviewers of television shows on law enforcement and the courts of say. But time and again, Hollywood returns to these formats to give the public the chance to love and hate the pursuit of justice. There is probably no way around this because the ends and means of criminal justice will always be in conflict, and that can make for good entertainment.

For the most part police and law enforcement personnel get the best representation as pursuers of right and security, except for when there is a bad guy from these offices, in which case the shows demonstrate how these people hurt their fellow good guys. Somewhat of a change has occurred by the making of more entertaining defense attorneys, who can be either intellectually commanding (which Perry Mason started) or sexy in some other way (as in Boston Legal). The CSI series have tried to make use of a mix of these approaches. It's interesting to note that when the shows seek to get away from this model, they turn to private detectives or to similar professionals whose skills are outside of the system, even though they are usually still friends with law enforcement (such as Bones, where they work for another part of government) or Castle, where a writer works for his own adventures that involved good looking characters who can skirt the law but still come down on the right side of the ends using whatever means are most attractive to the viewers.

The accuracy of television shows varies. One site dedicated to law students has recently reviewed the best and worst 25 legal shows (Weyenburg, 2011). In their review, they note how poor some shows are at reflecting reality and how some have still be important at generating interest in their professions. A law instructor quoted in the piece said "Television shows are repetitive. Whatever message it's sending keeps getting pounded into people. It influences juries, lawyers, witnesses… (Weyenburg, 2011)."

In general, the reviews note that the least exciting parts of law enforcement professions get left out in favor of some of the interesting parts. Defense attorneys do try to use a variety of technical elements to ensure that justice is done for their clients, actual commission of a crime notwithstanding. But this has not stopped the shows from encouraging people to want to be lawyers. According to the law school review, few shows do justice to what judges do; judges don't attack people like Judge Judy does.

A recent show that is remaking The Firm (by John Grisham) had an interesting opening story. A bereaved father sought to kill a juvenile boy who killed his son. It turned out the both the defense attorney and the prosecutor came up with an informal way to punish the father by using a confession as a form of coercion -- which the prosecutor said she would keep until she was convinced the father would not break the law again. While this is not very ethical, it could be a more realistic way that the real people of the profession try to get the means to balance with the ends.

TOPIC 2

Texas appears to be the only state in the Union that requires that all felony charges be substantiated through a grand jury indictment (Onecle, 2007). This would mean that, in most cases involving serious offenses, there is no choice about whether there will be an indictment by a grand jury. This would also mean that there could not be both a grand jury review and a preliminary hearing. However, after an indictment has been provided, it seems possible for certain pretrial procedures to occur that might act like a preliminary hearing where the defense has a lawyer present and arguing on his or her side. In Article 28.01, the codes allows for questioning the process or substance of an indictment provided by a grand jury.