Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: More than one court date?

Okay... One more question about the wheels of justice!

If more than one person (say...five people...) were being charged over one main incident (or series of incidents), would they each have to have a different trial, or would they be tried together?

In the instance I'm talking about, they're all being charged with different offences, though some of the offences overlap.

Does that make sense?

Thank you!

~Anna.

I'm pretty sure they would have different trials specially if they're being charged with different things.

If they were general offenses they would probably be tried seperately. I think the main reason for having trials together is when it deals with conspiracies or mob rule type of crimes. Some murder trials maybe held together and then the Jody Foster movie where she was a rape victim I believe was based on a true story. In that the guys who egged on the rape and did nothing to stop it were tried together so the group dynamics could be shown.

But I've also seen episodes of Law and Order where the defense attorney has put in a motion to seperate the trial when there are two defendants accused. So apparently it can go either way. I would guess there's some sort of strategy that goes into the lawyers' thinking about trying co-defendants together or apart. There must be someone on these boards with more understanding of the legal system to explain how this works.

It depends on the commonality of the charges and events among the various defendants. If the defendants are charged with substantially the same crime, the prosecution can elect to try them together. This prevents defendant X from claiming throughout his whole trial that the absent Y did it and defendant Y from claiming that X, who's nowhere to be seen, did it. If there are separate juries, they cannot fairly determine whether they think X or Y did it, because they've only seen a portion of the real trial.

Defendants can move to sever and have separate trials, if they can show undue prejudice by trying the defendants together, or if there would be more confusion from trying them together than apart. This could be the case if the defendants had different theories of defense - i.e., one claims self-defense, the other claims not to have been there at all.

Another thing worth noting is when separate defendants can have the same lawyer. Generally speaking, this is discouraged. Only when two defendants share the same defense, corroborate each others' version of events, and have decided to tie their fates to each other, should they consider sharing counsel. Otherwise, if one defendant suddenly produces evidence or makes a decision that implicates the other defendant, he has created a conflict for the lawyer. The lawyer is no longer able to zealously advocate for his clients because vigorously defending one would necessarily harm the other. The lawyer usually then has to withdraw from the case and be replaced by two new lawyers who have to start preparing their defenses all over again.

Because the defense works in secret, it is up to the defendants and their attorneys how much they want to share and cooperate in the defense strategy. At trial, both attorneys can question a witness, or one can decide that the other attorney's questioning was sufficient.

I went to law school to learn this, but I promise that most of it can be gleaned from watching Law & Order.

Rac gave a pretty good summary. I'll just add my two bits in the form of an example.

Say you have five people who all attacked someone together. The police show up on the scene, and they arrest everyone. During the arrest, they find a prohibited weapon on only one of the accused.

Now, in that case, they would probably have all the charges tried together - unless the defence could make a case to show undue prejudice to do so.

However, if subsequently, one of the accused went back and beat up the same guy again, that charge would be tried seperately - even though the same accused and the same complainant were involved.

As for the issue of seperate lawyers... Rac makes a good point. A really good example of this is when people are jointly charged with drug offences. When the police find drugs, they often charge everyone who might possibly be connected - to ensure that person X won't say that they were person Y's drugs and they discover that person Y wasn't charged. However, at court, if person X pleads guilty, they will often withdraw the charges against person Y. Hense, they both need seperate lawyers so that afterwards, person X can't claim that their lawyer sacrificed them to save person Y.

Hope that helps.

ML