What aspects of the stages in a capital case are designed to protect the rights of the accused? Do you believe that this system is sufficient to guarantee that only the guilty are convicted?

Preliminary Hearing

A criminal hearing to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute an accused

person. If sufficient evidence exists, the case will be bound over for grand-jury review or an

information will be filed in the trial court.

Hearing on Pre-trial Motions

A judicial session held for the purpose of deciding issues of fact or of law, sometimes with

witnesses testifying, before the trial begins.

Prosecution’s Case

The government, which has the burden of proving the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable

doubt, offers evidence in an effort to convince the jury that the defendant committed the offense.

Pondering thoughts

The email which was read to the class first period today really stuck with me all day. In it it stated that all participants of extra curricular activities were going to be drug tested before their seasons and randomly during the season. Of course this sparked a lot of frustration among different members of the class, most of whom agree that many of the sports teams at DHS would be at risk of losing members. Good news though....the whole email was made up by our teacher in order to get us thinking about our rights to privacy.

I think that the school as well as the community have turned a blind eye to the issues that exist within Deerfield. There is a drug problem. Listening to everyone talk about homecoming and what they did over the weekend at school today emphasized this issue very heavily.

Reflecting on the death penalty (late blog post)

A really important issue I discovered and have really noticed throughout this unit is how unfair the judicial system and the people involved in it are and can be. With studying the death penalty over the past coupe of weeks I've found misrepresentation to be a reoccurring factor many times. Along with that is the unfair advantage money causes throughout the system. Whether a conviction is decided racially or not the system is set up in a way that screws over minority's. And when those people get themselves into trouble or involved with criminal activity, they aren't able to provide themselves with a representative that is capable, educated, and willing to represent them and take on their case. Because these people can not afford to pay someone to help them the state provides them with someone to defend them in court. What I've noticed is that those state appointed defense attorneys have no idea what they are doing or just don't care to do much to help the person they were appointed to defend.