Law 295A - Advanced Criminal Procedure: Criminal Adjudication (Prof. Langer)

This course takes up where Constitutional Criminal Procedure leaves off (though you do not need to have taken the latter to take this class). While Constitutional Criminal Procedure mainly focuses on Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment restrictions on police investigations of crime, Criminal Adjudication deals with the judicial processes for determining the guilt or innocence of those accused of crime and for selecting an appropriate penalty. In other words, the course explores what happens after the police arrest a person and take him before a magistrate. Topics will include bail and pretrial detention, the prosecutor’s charging decision, grand juries and preliminary hearings, plea bargaining, criminal discovery, pretrial publicity, the defendant’s competency to stand trial, jury selection, trial by jury, the defendant’s rights of confrontation and compulsory process, the right to effective assistance of counsel, sentencing, direct attacks on criminal convictions, and double jeopardy. Again, Constitutional Criminal Procedure is not a prerequisite.