Compare and contrast the roles of the professional and nonprofessional courtroom work groups. Analyze how they work together to ensure a successful completion to a case before the court

Question

Do their individual roles intertwine to make the system work?

Answer 1

The courtroom work group is guided by statutory requirements and ethical considerations, and its members are generally dedicated to bringing the criminal trial and other courtroom procedures to a successful close. This chapter describes the role that each professional participant plays in the courtroom. The judge, for example, has the primary duty of ensuring a fair trial—in short, seeing that justice prevails. Nonprofessional courtroom participants include lay witnesses, jurors, the victim, the defendant, spectators, and members of the press. Non judicial courtroom personnel, or outsiders, may be unwilling or inadvertent participants in a criminal trial, but they fill a necessary role to make the system work. Defendants, victims, jurors, and most witnesses are usually unwilling or inadvertent participants in criminal trials. Although they are outsiders who lack the status of paid professional participants, these are precisely the people who provide the grist for the judicial mill. The press, a willing player in many criminal trials, makes up another group of outsiders.