Understanding Criminal Procedure

Understanding Criminal Procedure is primarily designed for law students and is organized and written so that both students and professors can use it with confidence to better prepare for courses and improve classroom dialogue. Already cited extensively in scholarly literature and judicial opinions, scholars, practicing lawyers and courts will also find the expanded content of this newest edition indispensable.

Inside you'll find extensive coverage of the most important United States Supreme Court cases and discussion of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, federal statutes, and lower federal and state court cases. Overarching policy issues are considered extensively, and some of the hottest debates in the field are considered with high-quality and objective analysis. The user-friendly organization of the text helps you develop a comprehensive understanding of broad topics, or refine your focus with intuitive subsections that help you find answers to pressing questions more efficiently. Citations to important scholarship, both classic and recent, help you to expand and refine your research on specific topics with ease, and footnotes include cross-references within the text to help you easily move to different chapters and subsections to understand how topics are inter-related.

This first volume, Investigation, is intended for use in introductory criminal procedure courses focusing primarily or exclusively on police investigative process and constitutional concerns. A chapter on the defendant's right to counsel at trial and appeal and other non-police-practice issues is included in both volumes to allow greater flexibility based on the design of particular courses.

The second volume, Adjudication covers the criminal process after the police investigation ends and the adjudicative process commences. It is most useful in more advanced criminal procedure courses that follow the criminal process through the various stages of adjudication, commencing with pretrial issues and explaining the process through charging, pretrial release and discovery, the trial, and post-conviction proceedings including sentencing and appeals.