Exam 10: Ethical Misconduct in the Courts and Responses

The term refers to a situation when a specific suspect has been fixated upon and therefore police and prosecutors ignore evidence that refutes their theory.

You are a prosecutor and are preparing for an upcoming trial. This is a case of arson, and the defendant is accused of setting fire to a barn, causing it to burn to the ground. You have an abundance of physical evidence that points to the defendant, but you also discover that a set of shoeprints found at the scene matches another person. This would be an example of  evidence.

A study by Cummings found that prosecutors use more than 30 different negative terms to refer to _____________________ .

There are two basic philosophies regarding how to apply constitutional principles:

You are a judge seeking re-election to the county court. The Supreme Court case that decided the issue described in the above question was:

The reasons for false convictions discussed in your text include all except:

Believing one's original theory of the case despite evidence to the contrary is called:

An ex parte conversation is one in which an expert witness presents his or her credentials in order to be accepted as an expert for testimony.

Some Supreme Court justices have indicated that reducing the __________________ of prosecutors might make them more hesitant to aggressively prosecute certain cases, for fear of being sued or prosecuted themselves.

You are a defense attorney defending a client against a murder charge. Your client is the former boyfriend of the victim, and it has been established by several witnesses that the breakup was not a pleasant one. Your client was identified as a suspect from the very beginning. During the trial, the prosecution presented a witness who claimed to overhear your client praying for forgiveness in his holding cell. The prosecution also presented the murder weapon, which was a softball bat with your client's fingerprint on the handle. Your client was convicted. A month after the conviction, you discover that a DNA sample was found at the crime scene and was never tested. You believe that it might exonerate your client. Unfortunately, the appellate court rejects your petition, citing the case of District Attorney v. Osborne . The decision in this case held that:

A prosecutor's legal duty is to win a conviction.

Interpretationists argue that the Constitution:

Explain the reasoning behind prosecutorial immunity and discuss the arguments regarding its use.

You are a defense attorney defending a client against a murder charge. Your client is the former boyfriend of the victim, and it has been established by several witnesses that the breakup was not a pleasant one. Your client was identified as a suspect from the very beginning. During the trial, the prosecution presented a witness who claimed to overhear your client praying for forgiveness in his holding cell. The prosecution also presented the murder weapon, which was a softball bat with your client's fingerprint on the handle. Your client was convicted. The witness who the prosecution called to testify about supposedly overhearing your client pray is an example of a jailhouse informant. The prosecutor had doubts about the veracity of this testimony, especially considering that the witness demanded that his own charge be dropped in return for his testimony. The prosecutor decided to present the witness anyway, figuring that it might not be totally proper, but that since he was convinced your client was guilty, it was ok to bend the rules in order to secure the conviction. This is an example of:

According to the text, the major complaint about defense attorneys is that they do not communicate regularly with clients.

Operation Greylord was a judicial scandal in Chicago in which both attorneys and judges were convicted of bribery.

Discuss the concept of "noble-cause" corruption as it applies to prosecutors. In what specific ways can prosecutors engage in this type of behavior?

The writers of the Bill of Rights were natural law theorists.

According to the text, only approximately 1 percent of investigations into attorney misconduct result in disbarment.

The view that an individual has no rights unless these rights are specified in the Constitution or have been created by some other legal source is referred to as the: