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Judges and Prosecutors

A judge, by definition, is a public official whose duty is to administer the law mostly by presiding over trials and rendering judgments accordingly. A prosecutor, on the other hand, is a lawyer who decides whether to judge an individual with a crime and tries to prove in court whether the accused is guilty or not. Both the judge and prosecutor in any court of law should ensure that at all stages of the proceedings, the individual rights and freedoms are guaranteed and that public order is protected. Both, the prosecutors and judges have had their roles “evolve” with time as the legal system also changes to fit rehabilitation facilities with the convicted criminals instead of instant death as was commonly seen before. This paper seeks to analyze the history as well as the current duties of judges and prosecutors.

            Prosecutors, for instance, are the most powerful officials in a criminal justice system (Davis, 2007). Their routine and everyday decisions control the outcome and direction of any criminal case and have a greater impact with more serious consequences than that of any       other criminal justice official. The most intriguing feature of these important or sometimes life-and-death decisions is that they are unrestricted and virtually unreviewable. They make most of these discretionary decisions behind closed doors where they answer only to their fellow prosecutors. Elected prosecutors too, who             presumably answer to the electorate escape being accountable for their decisions to the jury. This in part is because their most important responsibility is the charging and plea bargaining of decisions, they are shielded from public view.

            The prosecutors are also required to display all and any evidence in any particular case. Delma Banks, Texas, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death by execution. Barely 15 minutes to her execution, the United States’ Supreme Court hailed his execution and close to a year later reversed his sentence. The court found out that the prosecutors in his case withheld crucial evidence in his court hearing. Dwayne Washington, was charged with assault with intent to kill in the juvenile court of Washington, D.C. The two adults arrested with him were prosecuted in an adult court but the prosecutors of the adults threatened to charge him as an adult if he refused to testify against the two adults. Dwayne refused to testify claiming that he didn’t know anything on the crime they committed. The prosecutors in turn charged Dwayne as an adult and he got a life sentence in an adult prison. Andrew klepper, was arrested for attacking a woman with a baseball bat and sodomizing her. The prosecutors agreed to plea a bargain for him to plead guilty and get a reduced charge. As per the agreement, Andrew pled guilty and was placed on probation and sent to an out-of-state facility for troubled youth for eight weeks and his school guidance counselor agreed to foot the bill. Andrew’s two accomplices with much less serious crime each served time in jail while he was free.

            Judges on the other hand, apply legal reasoning to facts of a case in a rational and deliberate manner (Levav, 2011). The judges’ decisions are classified into two categories, “accept request” and “reject request”. Under the reject category, there are both the final rejections and those that include a stipulation of a review for a later date. The delay decisions constitute close to half of the reject category (Danziger, 2011). The decision to delay effectively maintains the status quo for the prisoner where their requests were rejected. Research shows that the probability of a favorable ruling is at the very beginning of a work day or after a meal break rather than later on in the sequence of cases. From a prisoner’s perspective, appearing at the beginning of the session presents a clear advantage be it in the morning or immediately after the break.

            A Virginia judge sentenced James Fields Jr. to a life sentence. The judge then added 419 more years for the murder or Heather Heyer at the 2017 Charlottesville white nationalist rally by ramming his car into a crowd. It is easy to start wondering how and why a judge would give a sentence that far exceeds the expected human mortality but the purpose of this exaggerated sentence is entirely symbolic for by giving a four century sentence the possibility of parole is not entirely dismissed (Brown, 2019), however close to 20 American states and several other countries globally have abolished parole for some or all offences. Several European countries have very short sentences for example in Norway where Anders Breivik was sentenced to 21 years with the possibility of an extension for his intentional murder of 77 people.         Some European countries still authorize life sentences although most of them do not. Some offences have a ready set maximum sentence that ties the judge not to exceed like importing child pornography sentence shouldn’t exceed 20 years, or illegal possession or sale of firearms isn’t supposed to exceed 5 years.

            In conclusion, both the prosecutor and judge have a certain level of liberty to handle a case but on exceeding causes legal action to be taken on the individual. As previously implied, the prosecutor can navigate and alter the term to be served. The prosecutors’ actions profoundly affected the lives of the accused and the person who presided over Andrew Klepper’s case was never challenged because even if someone tried, there wasn’t a legal basis for doing so. The judge who presided over James field’s case is a perfect example of how the U.S. is extra-ordinary in its policies for criminal judgment. It has by far the highest imprisonment rate globally and is the only democracy still having a death penalty.

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