Discuss the significance of McMann v. Richardson.

What will be an ideal response?


In 1970, the Supreme Court explicitly held that the right to counsel included the right to the effective assistance of counsel. As summarized by the Supreme Court in McMann v. Richardson (1970), "If the right to counsel guaranteed by the Constitution is to serve its purpose, defendants cannot be left to the mercies of incompetent counsel." While the Court clearly established that a defendant has a right to effective assistance, it did not define what level of performance is sufficiently effective. Up until the mid-1980s, a number of varying definitions and standards for what constituted effective assistance of counsel were used in federal and state courts.

Criminal Justice

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Frequent technological change, in combination with the morphing of the social fabric into a new and different reality every few years, creates anomic feelings of epidemic proportions because people can naturally react this way to instability.

Answer the following statement true (T) or false (F)

Criminal Justice

Spree murders are characterized by:

a. involve at least 10 victims.
b. perpetrated by mentally disordered offenders.
c. spread over multiple locations.
d. involve the taking of a trophy or souvenir by the killer.

Criminal Justice

With regards to entrapment, the ______ test focuses on the defendant and asks whether the accused possessed the criminal intent or the predisposition to commit the crime or whether the government created the offense.

a. objective b. Durham c. subjective d. Model Penal Code

Criminal Justice

Which of the following is not a probability sample characteristic?

a. probability samples are never perfectly representative b. probability samples are usually more representative than other sampling techniques c. probability sampling lets us estimate the accuracy of the sample d. probability sampling is always representative of the population.

Criminal Justice