Criminal Justice System Comparison

Criminal Justice System Comparison

Introduction

In the U.S. criminal justice system, those who have been arrested and formally charged with a crime usually go through three phases: the police or law enforcement, and corrections trial or imprisonment. In this paper the criminal justice system of Texas and Louisiana will be discussed.

Discussion

Adherence to the Adversarial system

The legal system of Louisiana is the only one system in US which is based on Roman or civil law, particularly the Code Napoleon of France. Under the state law of Louisiana the judicial interpretation of the statutes might decide the cases without giving any reference to the previous court cases. In real practice, laws of Louisiana fundamentally do not differ much from US common law and previous cases are cited by the lawyers and rulings in their arguments and ruling (Texas Politics, 2012). Though, there are difference between how Louisiana adheres to the adversarial system and how other states do, much differences have been bridged out due to the influence of common law. Despite of these bridged gaps, the “civil” tradition is still rooted in some parts of criminal and private laws of Louisiana State.

On the other hand Texas State follows the adversarial system which is the key feature of the Anglo-American common law tradition. Under Texas justice system both the parties of any legal action reserves the position of adversaries or opponents in front of court and court decides the winner of those legal conflicts. This system contrasts with that of the Roman law used in Louisiana State. In this system both sides have to compete in order to convince an unbiased jury or judges of the merit regarding their legal claim of innocence, guilt, liability or obligations (Texas Politics, 2012).

Elements of Crime

"Every offense consists of two elements: the material element or actus reus and mens rea. Mens rea is the most contested element of crime among others. Mens Rea means "guilty mind" in Latin, that is to say, the state of mind that should generally accompany the commission of a prohibited act for that act to be legally considered a crime (Belbow, 1999). The model panel code (MPC) has restricted it to four clearly defined types of blameworthiness or culpability and those were knowingly, purposely, recklessly and negligently. Texas criminal code has adopted the same format but has replaced purposely with intentionally and negligently is replaced with criminal ...