Courtroom Workgroup

Courtroom Workgroup

Justin Lewis

CJA/204

March 31, 2014

Mr. Seale

Courtroom Workgroup

Courtroom workgroups are an important part of the court system. They do many jobs that not many people see. The prosecutor has many duties also, but none more important than when gathering evidence to present. There is a criminal justice funnel that has many unfinished cases.

First, the main issue is on courtroom workgroups. A courtroom workgroup is an informal arrangement between a criminal prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, and the judicial officer. This foundational concept in the academic discipline of criminal justice characterizes the seemingly adversarial courtroom participants as collaborators in doing justice. Each member of the professional courtroom work group is dedicated to seeing a successful completion to the trial. In doing so they must follow a strict code of ethics as well as an almost reverent adherence to the law and its practice. In most cases at a state level, there are a limited number of judges and attorneys, so there is a likelihood that a personal as well as professional relationship will develop, and because of this, personal feelings must be ignored, and pursuit of justice must be the standard. Some changes that could be made to the courtroom workgroup would be not having the same people work with each other as often as they do. That way their personal relationships do not get in the way of a case and there would not be any biases. Maybe the court recorder should not be on the courtroom workgroup because they are supposed to type everything up about what is said during court, so they would not need to be present when the other got together. An officer who was working on the case could be put on the workgroup because he is going to have more knowledge and could get more information from others if needed.

The prosecutor probably has the most important job during a court case than anybody. The prosecutor plays an important role...