Criminal Procedure: Adjudication

3 units

This course covers the rules governing the adjudicative phase of the criminal process. It examines prosecutorial charging decisions and how the judicial system handles criminal cases once formal charges are brought, including the pre-trial, trial, and post-trial stages. Topics include prosecutorial discretion, bail, grand juries and preliminary hearings, the right to counsel, discovery, plea bargaining, the right to a jury trial, jury selection, and sentencing. Throughout the course, we will focus on the doctrines that govern criminal adjudication, while considering policy proposals designed to address structural flaws in the system. Students may take both Criminal Procedure: Investigation and this course. Grades will be based on a final examination and may take class participation, professionalism, and attendance into consideration. [BCCCR Requirement: this course contains 5 or more hours of BCCCR instruction.]