What is a &quot;Night Court&quot;? In the fictional TV comedy &quot;Night Court&quot; (both the original and the recent remake), the court is described as an &quot;Arraignment Court&quot;, which I understood should serve to read the charges, set bail and potentially record a plea, but defer the rest of the process (discovery, pre-trials, depos, trial, and eventual sentencing) to later appearances. In the TV show, the judge often declares &quot;Guilty/Not Guilty/Dismissed&quot;, and even sentences defendants (usually to &quot;Time Served&quot;). Is this an accurate portrayal of a Night Court, or purely a device for fictional purposes? What is a Night Court empowered to do, or not do?
A &quot;night court&quot; is simply a court that operates outside the ordinary business hours for the convenience of people who have work during those hours. They aren't common and are mostly found in medium sized and large cities. A &quot;night court&quot; can do whatever judges in the jurisdiction decide should be offered at that time based upon the needs of people who deal with the court system. Small claims civil cases and protection order cases, for example, are also often handled in a night court format, and a variety of criminal law matters not requiring a jury trial could be handled in that format. Most cities have a judge or magistrate assigned to take arraignments, not always at night (often the position is rotated among judges in the jurisdiction every now and then), which, as the question notes, &quot;should serve to read the charges, set bail and potentially record a plea, but defer the rest of the process (discovery, pre-trials, depos, trial, and eventual sentencing) to later appearances.&quot; An arraignment court would often accept guilty pleas, and sentence people when they plead guilty to infractions, petty offenses, and misdemeanors. It would also often dismiss charges when the prosecutor decides that the case has no merit and decides not to pursue it. It would rarely enter not guilty pleas on the merits, but the court in the television show might not be a pure arraignment court. But, as my knowledge of television comedies is less expansive than my knowledge of the law, I can't tell you if this is &quot;an accurate portrayal of a Night Court, or purely a device for fictional purposes.&quot; I'm sure that the TV version has wittier dialog, more interesting lawyers and court personnel, and less boringly repetitive cases than real life, but I'd have to defer to someone who has ever watched more than the trailers of the show to comment further.
Yes. In a civil case, there are two parties and the case is about finding out who has which obligations to whom. In a civil case, the plaintiff has to prove that they actually incurred damage through the actions of the defendant. A criminal case is the state vs. the defendant. The "wronged party" is the society as a whole, usually represented by the prosecutor. The victim, if there is one, just plays the role of yet another witness to find out if the defendant needs to be punished and how. There are also examples of crimes which are completely victimless but still punished by some societies. For example, in many places sexual intercourse between two consenting adult siblings is a crime (incest), even though there is no victim. Also, for some crimes it is even a crime to attempt to commit it. So one can be punished in a criminal court even though they didn't actually succeed in causing any damage to anyone. Example: I throw a rock at your car. When I hit, you can sue me in a civil court and force me to pay for the repairs. When I miss, I caused no damage to you, so there is nothing you could sue about. But what if I throw a rock at you and miss? That's attempted assault, maybe even attempted murder. When law enforcement finds out about it, I could be arrested, prosecuted and convicted to a prision sentence, even though you are perfectly fine.
Yes The normal remedy for not receiving a fair trial or due process is the declaration of a mistrial. A mistrial legally never happened so it is up to the prosecution to decide if they want a retrial. Unless the appellant can demonstrate that no reasonable jury would have convicted on the evidence (which seems unlikely verging on impossible), the appeal will not acquit the accused.
Yes, one should not publish evidence until a verdict is reached. This includes any possible appeals. In common law, doing so has long been one of the contempt of court offences called sub judice, or &quot;publishing information that interferes with a fair trial&quot;. The main point is that the jury should not be influenced by any information other than what they hear in the courtroom. In New Zealand, the offence was recently codified.
It depends on what the jury said, and if it's criminal or civil. In criminal cases, the judge may almost never set aside a verdict of acquittal. There is a single case in the US in which this happened, and it was a bench trial (no jury). That case featured the defendant bribing his trial judge; the Seventh Circuit held that he was never in jeopardy due to the bribe. As far as I can tell, that's the only one. There have been no cases that I can find of a jury's verdict of acquittal being overturnable. Judges can poll the jury to make sure they're unanimous (at least in federal court), and if they aren't then it's a mistrial, but that's because the jury was never in agreement in the first place. On the other hand, a judge has several ways to enforce an acquittal. In federal court, for instance, the defense can move for a motion of acquittal either before or after the case goes to the jury. If the motion is granted before the verdict, double jeopardy applies to retrial. If it's granted after a conviction, then the judicial acquittal can be reversed on appeal, possibly requiring a new trial. Before the verdict is returned, the judge can declare a mistrial. After the verdict is returned, it's too late for that. In civil cases, things are more complicated: double jeopardy does not exist there. There, there is a notion of a judgment as a matter of law: the judge determines that, based on evidence presented, no reasonable jury could possibly find the other way. This can happen before or after the verdict, and is appealable.
The term "jury nullification" gets thrown around a lot, especially by non-lawyers. But your question doesn't really seem to be about jury nullification. There is a well-established procedure in the federal courts of the United States, and similar structures in all state systems I'm familiar with, that allows the judge to overrule a civil jury if it finds that no reasonable jury could have reached the verdict they did. In the federal system, this is formally known as a "renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law," and is governed by Fed. R. Civ. P. 50. It's universally called, by lawyers, a JNOV, or judgment notwithstanding the verdict. This is common and well-established in civil cases, such as most patent cases. It isn't commonly granted, but jury nullification--or, more frequently, jury screwups or misunderstandings severe enough to justify it--are not very common either. Jury nullification usually refers to criminal verdicts, and almost always to criminal verdicts of "not guilty." These the Court cannot correct by imposing a guilty verdict without the jury, and these are the only cases, in my opinion, properly considered as "jury nullification" cases.
It doesn't really matter exactly what the judge says as long as it's clear whether the judge is sustaining or overruling the objection. With that said, in movies you'll rarely see the person asking the question get to respond to the objection, but you'll notice in the trial that happens in most cases. For example, if one party objects that a question calls for hearsay, the examiner may defend their question by pointing out that the statement is not offered for the truth of the matter asserted, or that it falls into one of the hearsay exceptions. At that point the judge is responding to both parties and someone else or possibly multiple people have spoken since the objection was originally raised, so she might specify that she's &quot;overruling the objection&quot; as opposed to just saying overruled, so it just makes it clearer on the record what she's ruling about. It's worth noting as well that she might need to specify which objection she's sustaining if more than one objection is raised. In this trial both hearsay and relevance objections have been raised at the same time, and the judge might specify that she's sustaining e.g. only relevance. This can tell the examiner whether they are free to keep going down the same line of questioning with different questions, if the objection sustained was hearsay, or to move to another line of questioning, if the objection sustained was relevance.
A court would &quot;dismiss&quot; an action, a claim, or a defendant, but I don't know of any American court that would &quot;dismiss&quot; a motion. Instead, a motion would be &quot;denied,&quot; or perhaps &quot;overruled.&quot; If I saw this language in a motion, I would assume it was just a lawyer doing the stereotypical redundance thing.