Court System and Prosecutors Office Essay

For better understanding of the US legal system, it is necessary to inquire about the terms like Megans law, criminal and civil cases, jurisdiction, etc. Thus, Megans law is the legally established demand for all former sex offenders to register with local police (NJ Office of the Attorney General, 2007). The law was passed in Jersey in 1994 after Megan Kanka, a had been raped and murdered by a recidivist sex offender that was the Kankas family neighbor (NJ Office of the Attorney General, 2007).

Thus, Megans law was based on the criminal case, and here the need to define both criminal and civil cases appears. Accordingly, a criminal case is lawsuit filed against a person accused of committing a crime. At the same time, a civil case is a court procedure for working out a disagreement between two people, businesses, or organizations (Courts, 2009). Both criminal and civil cases are ruled by courts according to their jurisdictions, i. e. the power of this or that court to decide cases of a certain class and in a certain geographical area (, 2009).

The relations of various branches of the US legal system are also important for its proper functioning (Federal Justice Center, 2009). Thus, the prosecutors office is closely connected to the local police departments while the latter have to report the findings of their investigation to the prosecutors for them to forward the case to the court. This concerns domestic violence, sex offense, robbery, and murder cases (Federal Justice Center, 2009).

One of the major tasks of the prosecutors is to follow the development of the legal system and be aware of the newest laws and regulations adopted by the Government. Drawing from this awareness, the prosecutors should structure their activities and decide certain cases like, for instance, the use of Miranda warnings, ruling of juvenile delinquency cases, , etc (Office of the Prosecutor, 2009). This point becomes especially important when the prosecutors office is considered in a the notions of grand jury, trial, sentencing, etc.

Thus, the grand jury is the group of people selected and sworn in by the court for the purpose of serving the criminal trials in the US Supreme Court (Federal Justice Center, 2009). The grand jury can serve its term up to 36 months as long as the case is heard, but the main task of the grand jury is not to issue a verdict of guilty/not guilty, but rather to help the federal court state if a person should be charged for a crime he/she is accused of (Courts, 2009).

In connection to this, the concept of arraignment is often used as the notion of the process of reading the charges, in a formal manner, to the person accused and potentially tried by the court (Federal Justice Center, 2009). As well, the concept of status conference is significant for the court system understanding. Thus, the status conference is the set meeting of all the parties involved in a court case aimed at establishing and scheduling the date of trial convenient for all the parties concerned (Courts, 2009).