The court I chose to visit was New York County Criminal Court, located on Centre street. I sat in on arraignments, which were being handled as if they were on a conveyor belt. This process is the first opportunity a defendant has to encounter a judge after being arrested. Most of the individuals had been arrested the day before and were then being arraigned on the following day, which goes with our notion of a fair and speedy trail. The crimes which I saw ranged from driving without a license to drug offenses, which seemed to be the crime of choice for the day. The assistant District Attorney had the task of presenting evidence against each and every individual as if it were their personal case, which I found to be straining.
The action taken by the judge varied on every case, some defendants were jailed for seven days after they plead guilty, some were released ROR, pending a future court date, and others were jailed after bail was set. What I found amazing was that after I had been there about an hour there were no cases left. Every one in the court took a seat and just carried on as the judge read his newspaper. I never imagined that criminal court would come to a stand still, where the judge would be reading a newspaper. I guess this is yet another piece of evidence that crime has in fact fallen in our city. I found the thing going on when I entered the court room across the hall and found the judge to be sitting and drinking his coffee.
Although I didn’t see any murder arraignments, my visit was quite pleasurable.
The Term Paper on Role Of Superior Court Judges
INTRODUCTION: Law is one part of a set of processes, social, political, economic and cultural, which shape and direct the development of society. Like all other mechanisms the law seeks to govern human behaviour. The Irish law system belongs to common law systems established in England by the Norman’s. This type of law responded to actual rather than anticipated problems. In contrast the law ...
