preview

America's Criminal Justice System

Good Essays
Open Document

History of Criminal Justice In America

America’s Criminal Justice system, it keeps America safe and the criminals at bay. Without any sort of criminal justice system America would be complete chaos. People would commit crimes because there would be no consequences for their actions. However, our laws didn’t just appear out of nowhere, they were created and molded to colonial America.

America's Criminal Justice system started during colonial America. With the early colonists coming from Europe, France, and the Dutch Republic our criminal justice system mirrored theirs until the influences slowly disappeared one by one and we were left with what we call the English common law system. Mens Rea was the very first principle …show more content…

For the next 550 years law was influenced by guilt. Later on, in English Common law, this theory became “ Actus Reas” which is a guilty act and “Mens Rea” which is a guilty mind. Sir William Blackstone was a legal scholar back in those days who would become the guidance to English and American law. Blackstone guided English and American Law for around 300 years. Many legal principles such as the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution were bounded to Blackstone's Biblical principles. Some of these principles of criminal justice include, justice is compensatory, the judgment under the law is declaratory, and a burden of proof and citizens cannot be treated like criminals unless they have been tried and convicted as criminals. The English Common Law System established a set of rules to solve issues that arose within society. This led to the first big distinction between two types of crimes, felonies, and misdemeanors. For more serious crimes a grand jury composed of members of the community decided if there was enough evidence to prosecute, but, no attorneys or public prosecutors …show more content…

However, Sheriffs were paid mostly from tax collecting and such high powers allowed corruption to sneak into the system easily. Next to come along were the judges. Judges were rarely professionals, most were political or religious leaders believing their role in the community was to enforce God’s will. Serious crimes were handled by multiple judges and latter courts which rarely met up, slowing down the judging. What would a judge be without a court? Colonial courts were almost identical to England's. The courts would hear the altercations between locals, they held legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the county's government. Unfortunately, courts were not very useful when handling legal business as the courts with more than one judge seldom set up meetings. The legal process in colonial America went like this, a crime was reported, then a judge would look at the evidence and decide if it was really a crime or not if the judge agreed it was a crime the person accused of the crime was taken in and sent to be questioned. Unlike today no lawyers were involved from either party. The accused was usually then released until trial. At trial, the defense attorney was there but didn’t really do anything. The district attorney was ordinarily chosen by the governor handed the prosecution. The district attorney in

Get Access
Related
Get Access