Why there was no trial for Michael Cohen I am reading in the news that Michale Cohen will be sentenced today, however, I haven't seen any information about trial. Is that because conviction is related to perjury plea, hence there is no need for trial and process is skipped right to the sentencing? Or is there special process of trial when special counsel / prosecutor is involved?
Cohen plead guilty to a number of charges. If you plead guilty with any charges, then there is no need to go forward with a trial.
While you have correctly stated the usual order of events in a trial, the judge has wide discretion to modify the order if it seems that justice will be served. Even in a serious criminal case, the judge can reopen testimony after closing arguments have started if the judge finds that there is good reason to do so. Traffic cases are generally less formal, and the judge will more freely modify procedure to bring out the facts of the case. I have often seen judges at traffic court ask significant relevant questions, and if they are in fact relevant, i don't think you will get far objecting to their begin asked. I am not a lawyewr, but I also have observed several traffic cases in Maryland and in NJ.
A prosecutor's discretion is almost unassailable. The main reason for this is to prevent prosecutors from having to defend in a legal forum every single decision made. In a civil matter, prosecutors have absolute immunity form being personally sued for their actions (again, to prevent a prosecutor from being sued from every single defendant). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_immunity Misconduct by prosecutors may be resolved by reversal or retrials of court proceedings. But this is not something that really has criminal penalties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutorial_misconduct#:~:text=In%20jurisprudence%2C%20prosecutorial%20misconduct%20is,is%20similar%20to%20selective%20prosecution. Occasionally, a prosecutor may be subject to discipline from the state's Bar. This is rare, and is not much of a deterrent. https://publicintegrity.org/politics/state-politics/harmful-error/misconduct-and-punishment/ Theoretically, a prosecutor who out and out breaks the law can be prosecuted. Examples seem to be rare, and are more about government malfeasance (expense reports, misuse of government equipment, etc.). Due to the above standards, proving criminal conduct around prosecutorial discretion will be extremely difficult, as will finding a fellow prosecutor willing to even go down that road. It is in no prosecutor's interest to set the precedent of prosecutors being jailed for their behavior. So, why has nothing happened? Because in general, prosecutors can get away with almost anything. And I will add, Because America seems to like it this way.
Generally speaking, ex parte communications with a judge (i.e. communications to which all parties to a case are not notified) are prohibited, both by law and as a matter of judicial and attorney ethics, subject to some narrow exceptions (e.g. applications for arrest warrants prior to the arrest warrant being carried out). Generally speaking, communications with the court (which is to say with judges or their subordinates) are made a matter of public record, and if the communication is about a particular case, all attorneys in the case must be given notice of it (if someone is not represented by an attorney, the notice goes to the defendant rather than their non-existent attorney). The attorney may then communicate the communication to their client, and generally speaking should communicate it to the client. I don't see anything in the question that suggests that this proposed communication would fall outside the general rule. But, the question isn't very specific and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that an exception might apply in a case with very unusual facts. Also, usually, a request to reconsider a sentence has to be made by a formal motion filed by the prosecutor or the defendant. Generally speaking, a third-party cannot file that motion unilaterally. A third-party or victim would usually only have input into the decision through the prosecutor's office. Third parties and victims are not generally permitted to file motions to reconsider sentences that have been imposed even in states with "victim's rights" statutes, but can publicly provide input to the court before a sentence is imposed, usually at the behest of either the prosecutor or the defendant. Furthermore, generally a criminal defendant has a constitutional right to not have a sentence made more severe after being sentenced the first time around. Reconsideration of a sentence once it is imposed may only be in the direction of leniency. Once a sentence is imposed, it can't be reconsidered to be made more harsh.
It has been investigated, it simply has not been prosecuted. The investigation started when someone reported suspicious activity in Hastert's accounts. The investigation proceeded from a belief that he was being blackmailed. After listening to a wire of a conversation between Hastert and the alleged blackmailer, the officers investigating decided it was not a simple case of him being blackmailed--they or the prosecutors' office used their discretion to go after Hastert for illegally structuring his payments to avoid anti-money-laundering reporting laws, and to my knowledge have not yet pursued any blackmail charge. Police and Prosecutors have very wide discretion regarding what charges they bring. In addition, it is very common to have a civil lawsuit brought that implicates criminal laws, but not have the criminal violations be charged. For example, if you steal a purse you go to jail, but if you steal a building you are rarely charged with a criminal offense. It is rarely to a civil litigant's advantage to bring up criminal matters and there are ethical rules limiting the interaction between the two.
This is entirely possible in a number of different motions that could have been made. At this point, Vinny had destroyed the Prosecutor's eyewitnesses by showing they had issues that called their testimony into question (The first has a timeline that doesn't line up with events, the second has poor vision and her prescription glasses were not doing their job, and the third had many obstructions blocking his view of the scene). His first witness tears apart the &quot;expert&quot; witness, who was only there to testify that the tires were the same brand (albeit, a popular brand at the time... loads of cars had the same tires). While it might go by a different name in different jurisdictions, the Prosecutor is allowed to make a motion to dismiss at any point prior to the jury goes to deliberation (as is the Defense; Also they might be able to make motions while the jury is in deliberations). If properly titled, the Prosecutor should have made a &quot;motion for nolle prosequi&quot; (not prosecuting). This can mean any number of things including the prosecutor no longer believes the evidence can prove the charges OR even that the prosecutor is no longer convinced that those charged committed the crime. In the &quot;My Cousin Vinny&quot; case, as the jury was seated the case cannot be retried by the State of Alabama at this point. This is possible because the Prosecutor's duty is to uncover the truth behind a crime, no matter what that truth becomes. In this case, despite his previous beliefs, the prosecutor in My Cousin Vinny, upon realizing he was wrong, admitted it and dropped the charges. Given his backstory of having worked as a defense attorney and making the switch after getting a client off some serious charges (and knowing the client was guilty) shows that he was inherently an honest man and dedicated to finding the truth of the matter (as a government employee, he undoubtedly took a pay cut when he switched to prosecution. Private industry almost always pays way more than a government equivalent). With that in mind, it is expected of prosecutors to be perfectly honest with what evidence they have and make the choices in the case based on that evidence. This comes up in another scene when Mona Lisa Vito explains to Vinny that the prosecutor was required to give Vinny all the files he had on the case... because Vinny, by representing the Defendant, is allowed to examine all evidence against his clients. The only dirty trick he pulled was the stunt where his expert witness was not disclosed and while bad, really it's the judge allowing the witness to testify that would have caused a problem with the trial (his response to Vinny's objection could have created a mistrial on appeal). To give a real world example, I was charged with driving on a suspended license which I had no idea I was doing at the time. As it turned out, the license was suspended for an unpaid traffic ticket that I had paid in the last minute... essentially the DMV forgot to unsuspend. A quick call fixed that issue but I still had to go to court over the charge. The day of the trial, I show up in the court room and the prosecutor walks over and tells me that they were going to enter a motion of &quot;nolle prosequi&quot; for the charge... essentially dropping it... because the matter was a clerical error on the state's part and not anything I did wrong. Edit: Additionally had the prosecutor not motioned to dismiss, Vinny certainly could have. In fact there are two points during the trial where Defense attorneys are expected to make these motions. The first is when the Prosecution rests their case. The second is before the jury is given the case to deliberate. As for why it was called a motion to dismiss in the film, it's likely to due with the fact that the audience would not know what a &quot;motion for nolle prosecui&quot; and it is a type of motion to dismiss.
What the jury must do A jury must follow the law it is given by a judge. A jury cannot "go rogue" and bring back a verdict on something that has not been charged and/or that the jury has not been told to consider. So, whether a jury has the option of convicting a defendant of a lesser included offense - a crime contained within a more serious crime - depends on the instructions the judge gives. Is it up to the judge and the judge alone? Not necessarily. Typically, judges must issue the lesser included offense instructions to the jury if the lesser included offense is part of the charged offense if there exists significant evidence the defendant only committed that lesser crime. So, only if the evidence supports such instructions. Further, at least in some jurisdictions, a trial judge may not instruct jurors on a lesser included offense if there has been no request to do so by the defendant. There appears to be a disagreement over what, if any, power a prosecutor should have in making such a request. One side would argue that a prosecutor would want to ask for it so that a defendant who is getting off on the larger crime doesn't skate completely free on, for example, a technicality. Another side would argue that prosecutors should not have a say because they are in fact who control which charges are submitted to the grand jury for indictment.
I'm no expert, but I had assumed this clause was present in case of the following situation. Joe is arrested for a robbery of a London bank. Joe says nothing under questioning. At trial, Joe's defense is that at the time of the robbery, he was in Sheffield drinking beer with his brother. On the basis of common sense, a jury could think: "Surely if Joe were really innocent, he would have told the police of his alibi at the time he was questioned, and saved himself a lot of trouble. Since he didn't do that, maybe a more likely explanation is that he wasn't actually in Sheffield, but that sometime between arrest and trial, he came up with the idea of faking an alibi in Sheffield, and convinced people to testify falsely to that effect. Yes, that does seem more plausible. So we are not going to give much credence to Joe's supposed alibi." So it really would be the case that not mentioning the alibi during questioning would harm Joe's defense at trial. The warning, then, is intended to keep Joe from doing this inadvertently. If Joe's alibi is genuine, but out of a misguided desire to exercise his right to remain silent, he doesn't mention it during questioning, he may accidentally increase his chances of being wrongly convicted. Everybody has an interest in avoiding this.