The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics provides the flowchart below that summarizes the most common events in the criminal justice system
Question #6
- What is a grand jury, and what is its relation to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments?
- Compare and contrast the United States Supreme Court decisions in Hurtado v.
California (1884) and United States v. Miller (1985).
- Many legal scholars have argued for the abolition of the grand jury system. What reasons have they provided to support such a position? (Hint — You may refer to the following essays: A Grand Juror Speaks and Grand Juries: Tools of Political Repression, which are available in the FINAL EXAM section of the Blackboard course site).
Question #7
- What are the requirements of a valid guilty plea according to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, and how are the United States Supreme Court decisions in Boykin v. Alabama (1969), North Carolina v. Alford (1970), and Henderson v. Morgan (1976) related to the Rule’s requirements?
- How is the United States Supreme Court decision in Padilla v. Kentucky (2010) related to the validity of a guilty plea?
- Based on the facts below and the existing case law and Federal Rule, should Sam’s guilty plea be vacated? Fully explain your answer.
On Christmas Eve, Sam was driving 70 miles an hour on the expressway during a blizzard when his SUV hit another vehicle. The crash killed the occupants of the other vehicle, a married couple, Mitch and Ashley, and their young son Joe. Evidence showed that Sam did not have a valid license and had marijuana in his car the night of the crash. Sam—who was charged with vehicular manslaughter, pleaded guilty to the charge, and was then convicted and sentenced to 24 years in prison—has asked the court to vacate his guilty plea. Sam has argued that his decision to plead guilty was based on a letter from his attorney in which the attorney told him that there was no defense to the case.
Question #8
The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics provides the flowchart below that summarizes the most common events in the criminal justice
system. (A larger version of this flowchart is available in
the FINAL EXAM section of the Canvas course site.)
Choose one of the following major criminal cases and discuss how it should generally progress through the system including the prosecution, adjudication, sentencing, and corrections stages:
• David and Louise Turpin child abuse case
• Nikolas Cruz school shooting case
• Hazing death of ΠΚΦ pledge Andrew Coffey • “El Chapo” drug trafficking case
• R. Kelly sexual assault case
