AG&#39;s and indictments I'm curious, let's say that a prosecutor has taken a case before a grand jury. That grand jury has chosen to indict. Can the AG withdrawal those indictments? I've been trying to find out here, but I've had no luck. Edit: This would regard Federal crimes and the United States.
Yes. The U.S. AG can decline to prosecute an indictment at any time until jeopardy attaches when a jury is sworn in to consider the charges at trial. The AG can also abandon a prosecution mid-trial but then cannot retry those charges later. The AG might abandon charges, for example, because the evidence does not appear to support the charges when presented at trial, or because, for example, a prosecution might damage a diplomatic relationship of the U.S. with another country, or because a new administration has different priorities than an old one and recently had its AG appointed to office while the trial was pending. This said, there are some situations (e.g. when there is a special prosecutor, or after a lower level prosecutor has entered into a binding plea agreement) when the AG does not have the authority to overrule the decisions to prosecute or not prosecute an indictment that is made by a lower level prosecutor. The AG has line authority to give orders to lower level prosecutors in the AG's office 99% of the time, but not always.
The burden for proving claims in civil actions is "preponderance of evidence," i.e., merely that "more than 50% of the evidence favors a conclusion." However, the standard for conviction of any crime is "beyond a reasonable doubt." I.e., if the defense can raise reasonable doubt about one's guilt then the defendant should be acquitted. There is quite a bit of space between the two standards, which is compounded by prosecutorial discretion to even bring criminal charges.
Yes and no. There are numerous cases where criminals, upon breaking in to somewhere, find evidence of a worse crime and notify authorities. This will provide reasonable suspicion enough for entering the scene. Generally, in testimony, Statements against Interest are more believable because a burgler wouldn't admit to breaking and entering if he had a way to explain why he was there in the first place. (Example: Alice breaks into a Warehouse and sees a mutilated body and blood everywhere. Alice immediately stops her theiving ways and calls 911 to let them know about the scene. Whether or not Alice stays, a dead body is enough probable cause to secure the crime scene without warrant. Its in Alice's interests to stay and help as there is trace of her at the scene and she would be pegged as a suspected murderer. If she's picked up and admits to calling the cops, it's good, but staying and helping out after the call will likely get her off on the charges related to the murder.). It could also work if they are persuing one crime and discover evidence of a second unrelated crime. (i.e. Alice robs the factory and gets away. The Factory Foreman calls the cops to investigate the crime scene, which at this point, does not need a warrant. While investigating, the Cops find security footage that Bob, the night guard, killed Chuck, a late night worker, removed his body, and cleaned the scene, all before Alice broke into the factory. The outcome of the case being made against Alice does not affect their need to prosecute Bob, as they obtained that evidence while looking for Alice in a valid investigation, not Bob, thus it is legal). Under these situations a crime that leads to a separate valid crime involving a different party is admissible. There are two possible reasons that the attorney might think this: Fruit of the Poisonous Tree: This is the obvious element... the kids committed a crime with the hopes that the cops would use the evidence found by them in their commission of a crime to get the real bad guys. The attorney parent thinks this is stupid because the kids broke in specifically to do this and thus any evidence is now tossed out of court. This isn't usually the case in how this scenario will play. Generally the cops are more than happy to look at evidence obtained by criminals that points to another crime. In fact, this is how a lot of gang enforcement units and drug enforcement units operate... pick up a small fish and cut a deal for evidence against a bigger fish (turning state's in the criminal lingo, as the witness is becoming State's Evidence to another crime). As long as it's given to the cops as part of legitament evidence seeking, the cops can follow the leads where ever they... er... lead... Chain of Custody: This is probably, if properly thinking, what the attorney parent is thinking that's a bit more probable. Lets say these kids found a dead body with a sword in it and take the sword to the police... this could get dicey as the kids have contaminated the evidence in possible ways that the killer's lawyer could get thrown out. One thing CSI doesn't always show (though there are a few episodes where it comes up, but not many) is that when something is taken in as evidence, it is carefully documented, sealed, and tagged with a check in/check out list. Every time the seal is broken, the person breaking the seal notes the time, date, and reason and when does, reseals it with a new seal, and signs the time and date of the seal again. This is so at trial, the attorneys know exactly who opened up the evidence, what they did, and what possible contaminants were introduced. You even have to sign into a crime scene before you go up to the yellow tape. A good defense lawyer would call into question any evidence from anything the kids handled to get the evidence tossed (i.e. Your honor, these Meddling Kids handled the sword without following the chain of evidence. They even let their dog handle it. They had already harrassed my client earlier today by insunuating that he was involved with a hoaxed paranormal activity to scare people away from the factory. Since they claim they found the sword, but did document it at the scene, we don't know anything about it prior to the police's chain of custody. I motion that the evidence be dismissed.) If this is successful, anything from the sword is now no longer admissible as if the sword had never been found (including blood of the victim on the blade and finger prints of the suspect on the hilt)... in effect the evidence was prossessed as best the police could but the veracity of the story of it's discovery is too questionable to be considered. The defense does not have to be right, he just has to show there could be another explanation for the sword and the evidence linking his client to the crime committed by it. In short, without specific details, the attorney parent could be right or could be wrong, or more humorously, right, but for the wrong reasons. Edit: U.S. only. See other answers for other jurisdictions.
Its worth actually reading through the law again - they're meant for different categories of drugs - and its worth looking up the relevant laws as a whole. You can't cherrypick which law you charge them under in this case. It depends on what the suspect has in posession, and if you have more serious charges, they're probably going to be preferred unless the prosecution decides to throw the entire library at the suspect and charge them with everything they can, or a larger subset. A quick search on the internet - which shouldn't be taken as legal advice, brings up this link. Category 1 drugs are addictive and seen as therapeutically useless - you shouldn't have any realistic reason to have quantities of it in your posession. Category 3 is drugs with therapeutic use - stuff like codine. You could get a prescription for that, but there's potential for abuse. They're aimed at different classes of drugs - and the confusion is over a misinterpretation of what the law is about. As an aside, this is why you need to usually read more than just a specific statute or law to get what its about.
The standard of proof for a criminal conviction is the same. So they would similarly need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to convict the foreign national of a crime. But deportation is not a criminal proceeding, and has a different standard of proof. (In deportation you also don't have criminal defendant rights like right to an attorney if you can't afford one.) I believe the standard is "clear and convincing evidence".
An "inquisitorial" system is one where the Judge or Magistrate actively questions the accused and witnesses to attempt to determine the facts. The Judge may also determine, at least in part, what witnesses to call in what order. An "adversarial" system is one in which each side presents its case, and the judge acts as an umpire deciding on procedure, and possibly makes the final ruling (or directs a jury to do so) but is not actively involved in questioning witnesses or deciding what witnesses to call. I don't see anything which would prevent a common-law jurisdiction from establishing an "inquisitorial" system by statute except longstanding tradition, but as far as i know no such jurisdiction has ever had such a system in place for dealing with criminal matters. The informal procedures in some small claims courts do have judges more actively involved than in other courts. I think this is also true in some family courts as well. I think I have heard of some civil-law jurisdictions which use something like an adversary system, but i am not sure of that. Certainly a civil-law country could pass a law setting up such a system if it chose to.
Acquittals in criminal jury trials cannot be appealed (at least in a way that affects the outcome, Colorado and a few other states allow criminal appeals by the prosecution solely for the purposes of clarifying the law prospectively). Interlocutory appeals (i.e. appeals before the case is over) by the prosecution are allowed for pre-trial rulings (e.g. suppression of evidence rulings in a pre-trial hearing), in criminal cases, but not for evidentiary rulings made in the midst of a jury trial (which is when jeopardy attaches for the purposes of the double jeopardy rule, which is what prevents acquittals from being retried). An error in a ruling on an admission or rejection of evidence at trial may be appealed by a convicted defendant if the alleged misapplication of the evidence rule was an abuse of discretion by the judge, and was not &quot;harmless error&quot; (i.e. if as part of all errors made in the case there is a reasonable probability that it changed the outcome that the jury reached).
It happens all of the time, even though it is mildly improper. Usually, the lawyer can get away with it until the judge sternly warns the lawyer not to try it again, in which case the lawyer risks being held in contempt of court. This is riskier for a prosecutor (who risks this conduct causing a conviction to be overturned on appeal resulting in a new trial), than for a criminal defense attorney. This is because an acquittal, if obtained by these methods, is still not subject to appeal. Indeed, for a criminal defense attorney, even if it results in a mistrial followed by a new trial (which can be allowed if the mistrial is caused by the conduct of the defense), the mistrial will often count as a win if the trial was going badly on the merits.