How to Try a Murder Case

How to Try a Murder Case
Author: Michael D. Wims
Publisher: American Bar Association
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Criminal procedure
ISBN: 9781616320850

How to Try a Murder Case covers the preparation from the very beginning -- even before the crime was committed -- and progresses through the investigation to searches, arrest, and interrogation. This book explains the law, provides examples, and gives advice by offering the reader vicarious experience in trying a murder case.

For the Prosecution

For the Prosecution
Author: C.J. Williams
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2020-03-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1538138484

The vast majority of prosecution work occurs outside of courtrooms and less than 10% of all criminal cases go to trial. Courtroom performance, then, is of little import if prosecutors have not carefully investigated and prepared cases for prosecution. Courtroom performance is at its best, on the other hand, when prosecutors have thoroughly supervised the investigation and prepared the case for trial. In the end, the raw material prosecutors have to work with in courtrooms—the evidence—is a product of all of the work prosecutors perform outside the courtroom. For the Prosecution: How to Prosecute Criminal Cases seeks to provide prosecutors and those who wish to become prosecutors, including law students, guidance on how to prosecute criminal cases from investigation to appeal. This book provides guidance on how to successfully investigate and prosecute criminal cases. Thus, this book focuses on strategies and tactics involved in prosecution, and the soft skills for managing cases and people. This book examines how to think about criminal cases, guide investigations, and break down and organize complex cases in a persuasive manner. The book also examines ways to organize and prioritize caseloads, strategies for taking down criminal organizations, and tactics for turning criminals into cooperators. The book describes how to handle motions practice, prepare a case for trial, and successfully litigate sentencing hearings and appeals. This is not just another trial advocacy book. It is all of the work prosecutors perform outside the courtroom that makes it possible for them to resolve more than 90% of their cases through guilty pleas, and to prevail on the relatively few cases that go to trial. This book focuses on all the laws, duties, strategies and tactics prosecutors execute investigating and prosecuting criminal cases for those who wish to become prosecutors or further their career. Throughout C.J. Williams explores the strategies and tactics involved in prosecuting criminal cases, as well as examines the skills a successful prosecutor needs to develop in order to work with all those involved in the criminal justice system. He even brings his own experiences and lessons learned about prosecuting criminal cases into For the Prosecution, giving the reader more than the typical trial advocacy book.

A Murder in Virginia

A Murder in Virginia
Author: Suzanne Lebsock
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780393326062

Recounts the events surrounding the dramatic post-Civil War trial of a young African American sawmill hand who was accused of ax murdering a white woman on her Virginia farmyard and who implicated three other women in the crime.

Dr. Sam Sheppard on Trial

Dr. Sam Sheppard on Trial
Author: Jack DeSario
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780873387705

The new prosecutor faces an old controversy -- An unlikely setting for murder -- Did Sam murder Marilyn? -- Putting the pieces of the puzzle together -- Final trial preparation : the emergence of the prosecutor's strategy -- Opening statements : setting the stage -- The Sheppard team presents its case -- The prosecutors speak -- Closing arguments and a verdict : the end of a legal era.

Relentless Pursuit

Relentless Pursuit
Author: Kevin Flynn
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2007
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 9780399154065

Follows the personal mission of a Washington, D.C., federal homicide prosecutor who dedicated himself to bringing justice and closure to the family of a brutally murdered mother and daughter, a case during which the author's own father passed away.

Anatomy of Injustice

Anatomy of Injustice
Author: Raymond Bonner
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2013-01-08
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0307948544

From Pulitzer Prize winner Raymond Bonner, the gripping story of a grievously mishandled murder case that put a twenty-three-year-old man on death row. In January 1982, an elderly white widow was found brutally murdered in the small town of Greenwood, South Carolina. Police immediately arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a semiliterate, mentally retarded black man with no previous felony record. His only connection to the victim was having cleaned her gutters and windows, but barely ninety days after the victim's body was found, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Elmore had been on death row for eleven years when a young attorney named Diana Holt first learned of his case. With the exemplary moral commitment and tenacious investigation that have distinguished his reporting career, Bonner follows Holt's battle to save Elmore's life and shows us how his case is a textbook example of what can go wrong in the American justice system. Moving, enraging, suspenseful, and enlightening, Anatomy of Injustice is a vital contribution to our nation's ongoing, increasingly important debate about inequality and the death penalty.

Justice in Mississippi

Justice in Mississippi
Author: Howard Ball
Publisher:
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN:

The compelling real-life story of the criminal investigation, indictment, and trial of Edgar Ray Killen, the preacher and former Ku Klux Klansman finally convicted in June 2005 for the deaths of three civil rights workers--forty-one years after their brutal murders. A stunning final chapter to the case immortalized in the movie Mississippi Burning.

The Last Murder

The Last Murder
Author: George R. Dekle
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-05-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0313397430

While awaiting execution, America's most notorious serial killer Ted Bundy confessed to having murdered 12-year-old Kim Leach. But the details of his confession turn out to be false. What were his motivations for lying? And how do investigators get down to the truth? In this case, details like a handful of sand and a pile of mildewed cigarette butts helped reveal the truth.

Murder by the Prosecution

Murder by the Prosecution
Author: Andrew L. Urban
Publisher:
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-07
Genre: Criminal justice, Administration of
ISBN: 9781925642537

Exposing the grave mistakes in Australia's not-so-trustworthy criminal justice system, film critic turned activist journalist Andrew L. Urban recounts how his life is changed when he is drawn into the field of wrongful convictions after reviewing a documentary about the case of Hobart grandmother, Sue Neill-Fraser, convicted of murder -- without evidence. As he probes further, he comes across other cases and finds police investigations marred by tunnel vision; lawyers flouting the rule of law chasing convictions; courts admitting inadmissible (and false) forensic evidence; the Crown withholding exculpatory evidence; and worst of all, prosecutors making up murder scenarios. Driven by disturbing discoveries over five years of research and writing -- covering five extraordinary cases: Sue Neill-Fraser, Gordon Wood, Henry Keogh, David Szach, and Gary Nye -- Andrew interviews specialist legal academic Dr Bob Moles and others as he charts the damning list of errors. Bringing together his writings and interviews on the subject as well as his correspondence with legal academics and politicians, including Attorneys General, Andrew lists action points that if implemented would help reduce the incidence of wrongful convictions.