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A criminal charge is a formal accusation made by a governmental authority (usually a public prosecutor or the police) asserting that somebody has committed a crime. A charging document, which contains one or more criminal charges or counts , can take several forms, including:
Duress is a threat of harm made to compel someone to do something against their will or judgment; especially a wrongful threat made by one person to compel a manifestation of seeming assent by another person to a transaction without real volition. - Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed. 2004) Duress in contract law falls into two broad categories: [6]
American Law Reports indicates that "the cases are in disagreement over the availability of voluntary intoxication as a defense in a terroristic threat or terroristic threatening prosecution, with intoxication being a defense where a specific criminal intent is an essential element of the offense, but not a defense where the offense is ...
Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states.
The United States Constitution, including the United States Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments, contains the following provisions regarding criminal procedure. Due to the incorporation of the Bill of Rights, all of these provisions apply equally to criminal proceedings in state courts, with the exception of the Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Vicinage Clause of the Sixth ...
In federal law, crimes constituting obstruction of justice are defined primarily in Chapter 73 of Title 18 of the United States Code. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] This chapter contains provisions covering various specific crimes such as witness tampering and retaliation, jury tampering , destruction of evidence , assault on a process server , and theft of court ...
In common law, the principle of prosecutorial discretion allows public prosecutors a wide latitude to decide whether or not to charge a person for a crime, and which charges to file. [1] A similar principle in continental law countries is called the principle of opportunity .
A plea bargain, also known as a plea agreement or plea deal, is a legal arrangement in criminal law where the defendant agrees to plead guilty or no contest to a charge in exchange for concessions from the prosecutor. These concessions can include a reduction in the severity of the charges, the dismissal of some charges, or a more lenient ...