By now, you should have observed a court proceeding for a criminal case.
In this module, you will submit a paper summarizing the court proceeding you observed and other relevant information. Your Module 03 Course Project should include the following information:
- Date, time, city, state, name of courthouse, of court proceeding
- What kind of court proceeding did you observe?
- Trial, hearing, plea bargain, sentencing hearing?
- If you watched recorded content, you must be sure to explain the source (You Tube, etc.)
- What was the defendant’s name?
- Name of all participants (judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, any witnesses)
- What is the crime/specific criminal law that the defendant allegedly violated? (This will be important for the next part of the assignment.)
- What individuals did you observe in the court proceeding? (prosecutor, judge, etc.)
- What was the role of each individual you observed?
- How were the defendant’s constitutional rights protected during the proceeding?
- Examples:
- Defendant’s right to notice of charges
- Right to counsel (Sixth Amendment)
- Privilege against self-incrimination (Fifth Amendment)
- Right to confront witnesses (Sixth Amendment)
- Right to present evidence (Sixth Amendment)
- Right to a jury trial (Sixth Amendment)
- Exclusion of illegally obtained evidence (Fourth Amendment)
- Examples:
- What was the outcome of the proceeding? (guilty plea, set for trial, conviction, sentence)
- Student’s reflection and overall thoughts about the proceeding.
- Was it more/less formal than you expected?
- What student learned from the experience
- How experience helped student learn more about criminal law and procedure
Be sure your paper includes all information asked for in the assignment.
Submit your completed assignment by following the directions linked below. Please check the Course Calendar for specific due dates.
Save your assignment as a Microsoft Word document. (Mac users, please remember to append the “.docx” extension to the filename.) The name of the file should be your first initial and last name, followed by an underscore and the name of the assignment, and an underscore and the date. An example is shown below:
Jstudent_exampleproblem_101504