Adversary Trial Process essays

Adversary Trial Process essays Similar in the unfair nature of its trial by combat ancestor, the adversary trial process is weak in its pursuit of lawfulness compared to Europes inquisitional system. Adversary process is a system of justice, supervised by a judge, where opposing parties present evidence to an impartial jury through a process of questioning witnesses. This system, however, creates too much human involvement to truly represent a system of justice. The word adversary means opponent or enemy and connotes the Devil. In a perfect courtroom, human involvement would be irrelevant. True determination of guilt would overcome any minor injustices created by the competitive trial, impartial jury, or uninvolved judge. However, far from being the just system of the perfect courtroom, the adversary trial process does not provide for realistically fair trials due to its harsh competitive nature (leading to violations of evidence submission), potential for biased juries, and possible subjective judging. Lawyers performing in an adversary trial often act unfairly. As evidence is to be viewed by unprofessional jurors rather than clergymen, evidence must follow strict guidelines for submission into a trial. Hearsay, or evidence based on the reports of others rather than the personal knowledge of a witness, is strictly not allowed in higher tribunals of the court system. Evidence illegally obtained is also not admissible to a trial. However, because of the highly competitive nature of the courtroom created by the adversary system, lawyers often manage to slip these inadmissible but often key pieces of evidence past the neutral arbiter, onto the record and into the minds of the jury. The lawyer, in pursuit of money and at least a fair trial for their client, looks past his opinion or knowledge of guilt and makes an attempt to fully test the evidence in favor of his client and best present his case to the court. In his defense, he may argue that he p...