Courtroom Professional Standards: Necessary Homicide

Courtroom Professional Standards
Jonathan Evans
CJA/224
August 10, 2014
John Pierce

Courtroom Professional Standards
Everyone thinks they have it exactly right on TV shows like Law and Order or CSI. Someone commits a crime, is charged and found guilty all in an hour or two. For many crimes this is not the case, the offender may never be found, or someone maybe falsely convicted. It all hinges on a set of people. The judge, the defense attorney and the prosecutor. All of which are not perfect like the US Judicial System, and justice is not always served. Individual rights are violated due to prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective assistance by criminal defense counsel, and judicial misconduct. In some instances, the guilty
During the trial, Stephenson appeared in court with an attached stun belt. This violated his right to the presumption of innocence, and his attorney did not object. This is an example of ineffective criminal defense counsel. In 2009, a federal judge overturned the murder conviction.
Do I believe that Stephenson was innocent of the triple homicide? I most certainly do not.
At the time of the murder, he was pending trial for an assault on a man with a shovel that left the victim severally mentally and physically damaged. Do I think he had a fair trial due to the fact the the stun belt prejudiced the jury? NO, I don’t, because until he is convicted is should be believed innocent. That’s what our country was founded on.
This case relates to the Crime Control Model because Stevenson was hooked to a stun belt during the court proceeding as if he had already been found guilty. If he had been assumed innocent until proven guilty there would not have been any need to hook a stun belt to an innocent man. The jury was prejudiced by seeing the stun
According to the complaint filed by The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, he is accused of engaging in conduct that “demonstrates a lack of impartiality, failure to follow the law, abuse of judicial power and violations of the Michigan Code of Judicial Conduct." One of the cases involved the bond and a new trial given to Tyrant McGee, who was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl. After being convicted of rape, Tyrant McGee was allowed to continue his bond. When the prosecutor cursed while challenging the ruling, Morrow granted a new trial. I find this horrendous, to let a convicted child rapist back on the street in the first place, and to grant him a new trial just to spite the prosecutor for challenging your ruling is a misuse of