Posted: September 9th, 2022

The pitfalls of overcharging or undercharging a defendant

The pitfalls of overcharging or undercharging a defendant
Prosecutors and law enforcers have consistently adopted the aspect of overcharging defendants by including additional charges that they may or may not be in a position to prove during the trial in the interest of meeting their different interests at the expense of justice, fairness, and equality. Prosecutors and law enforcers engage in overcharging of the defendant in the interest of improving their plea bargaining (Lang, 2013). The prosecutor has discretion on the charges to level against a defendant; thus, overcharging enables them to accuse the defendant of crimes that cannot be proved, thus inclining the defendant to plead guilty to crimes that the defendant committed the law enforcers belief. Consequently, the overcharging can be applied through horizontal or vertical overcharging. Horizontal overcharging applies when prosecutors or the law enforcers multiplies the number of crimes the defendant has committed by raising separate offenses charged as different crimes. On the other hand, vertical overcharging entails charging the defendant with a single offense that is higher as compared to the actual crime they committed. An example of a case the prosecutor has been involved in overcharging the defendant is the United States v. Schales. Overcharging has a wide range of pitfalls in the criminal justice system about arising charging issues and the case, defeating the criminal justice system’s purpose in delivering justice, equality, and fairness to parties in a legal dispute.
An example of a lawsuit the prosecutor has overcharged the defendant
The case of the United States v. Schales presents a case where the prosecutor engages in overcharging the prosecutor to have better plea bargaining. In this regard, Walter M. Schales approached a 14-year old girl at Wal-Mart and secretly attached a camera underneath her mini-skirt taking a photograph. A shopper noted the incident and notified the police. Schales deleted some of the camera photographs, but the police were able to retrieve some of the photographs for the two young girls (Floyd and Sinclair, 2005). The police secured a search warrant and searched the Schales residence, where they found a large quantity of child pornography. The police collected different forms of evidence on child pornography, including photographs of minor girls’ faces, cut out on pasted on sexually explicit images of other girls downloaded from the internet. Forensic analysis on Schales computers showed thousands of child pornography images downloaded from the internet where most were below the age of six.
The federal grand jury charges Schales on different counts that included receiving and distributing sexual exploitation material for minors. Two counts for owning material with sexual exploitation of minors and three counts for acquiring and producing a visual depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct considered obscene (Floyd and Sinclair, 2005). After going through the trial, Schales was found guilty for all the three counts leveled against him, and he was sentenced to federal incarceration of 210 months on count one and three and a term of 120 months on count two.
Schales appealed the conviction citing various constitutional and evidentiary issues, such as the claims that the Fifth Amendment protection against double jeopardy had been violated in the two convictions. The Ninth Circuit reviewed the case by giving directives for the federal courts to use the blockburger test to assess and evaluate the double jeopardy claims. The blockburger test evaluates cases where similar acts that involve a violation of two different statutory provisions. The test must be applied to determine if the two offenses are one or two and if each of the two offenses requires proof of a fact which the other does not (Floyd and Sinclair, 2005). The court evaluated whether the receipt of material containing sexual exploitation of minors needed proof of an additional fact which the owning of material containing sexual violation of minors does not. The court found that the conviction of getting child pornography violation and owning child pornography violated the double jeopardy clause since the crime of owning child pornography is a lesser offense than the receiving of child pornography. This means that one crime is a subset of the other and thus, they should be addressed and handled under a similar charge. In this regard, the government can charge the defendant with possession and receipt of sexually explicit material, then entering judgment against the defendant amounts to the violation of double jeopardy, especially when the issue of determination is based on the same conduct. The court of appeal argued that the government had the right to prosecute Schales on various counts in on prosecution, but it had the burden of starting the different counts by charging and giving separate offenses. On the contrary, the government posed a counter-argument that the charged conducts of receiving and possessing sexually explicit material s were factually different since the events happened in different periods. Additionally, the government argued that the receiving and possession were separate conduct since the defendant received child pornography images in his computers and printed them and retained them in different compact discs. The court countered this view, arguing that if the defendant has stored the images in separate materials, the government could press multiple charges for every type of media posed as long as the sexually-explicit images were obtained through different transactions.
The case of the United States v. Schales indicates that the prosecutor overcharged the defendant. The prosecutors adopted indictments, charging instruments as a strategy to make the prosecution of the cases much easy. The government had the burden of providing additional evidence in the interest of proving the separate offenses. Therefore, the prosecutors violated the Fifth Amendment double jeopardy prohibitions with the interest of securing an easy, certain, and profitable conviction at the expense of the defendants.
Pitfalls of overcharging a defendant
Some different challenges and issues arise from the cases where the prosecutors and law enforcers have been engaging in overcharging the defendants. The different issues introduce barriers and constraints in the prosecution process at the expense of finding justice, equality, and fairness among the conflicting parties (Crane, 2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). In this regard, the defendant’s overcharging amounts to pitfalls as it is done without adequate proof to support and clarify the additional charges, thus affecting the judicial proceedings. Charges that lack sufficient proof and certainty fall short of an objective threshold in criminal and civil cases. The American Bar Association standards are against the filing of charges backed with insufficient proof arguing that the attempt to file charges on a bare minimum of evidence amounts to substantial errors in convictions. The increased errors result in incorrect outcomes, and thus the judges and prosecutors must make it mandatory to screen cases, thus eliminating unnecessary charges. In the case of the United States v. Schales, pressing additional accounts makes the case lose the evidence threshold for the different charges, thus making the case weak. In the case that there were few changes, it would be possible for the prosecutor and the law enforcers to compile evidence, thus making their case against the defendant watertight. Therefore, the defendant’s overcharging makes the cases weak since there is insufficient evidence to support the additional charges pressed.
Overcharging of the defendant works against the prosecutors, making their cases weak due to integrity, competence, and ethical issues raised against them. The presentation of inadequate proof to increase the charges against the defendant raises ethical concerns on the part of the prosecutor (Kutateladze and Lawson, 2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). The increased counts against the prosecutors’ defendants make the cases weak and lose meaning since the modern criminal codes are robust. The counts lack probable cause to support their implementations, raising questions on the prosecutor bar license questions. Based on inadequate proof, pressing charges indicate the prosecutor’s selfish perspective by filling charges flimsy charges, thus proving to be counterproductive. In the case of United States v. Schales, the appeal by Schales went through as the court revealed that the prosecutor had violated the double jeopardy prohibitions, thus questioning the character, integrity, and competence of the prosecutor. This fact includes the court to turn down some counts as they were considered a subset of others. Therefore, the prosecutors’ overcharging of defendants has proved to be counterproductive as it raises integrity, competence, and character questions on the part of the prosecutor.
The attempt or the act of overcharging defendants introduces barriers to the judicial proceedings since charges filled are disproportionate to the crime to increase the counts on the part of the defendants, thus making the cases weak. The prosecutors inappropriately increase the charges against the defendants such that they have to include inconsistent or non-factual evidence to qualify the additional counts (Ball, 2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). The overcharging of the defendant alleges increased crimes, placing too harsh labels on the defendant’s conduct or threatening criminal implications that are too severe compared to the facts on the ground. The aspect of overcharging is viewed as legal sufficiency of charges leveled against the defendant, but the accusations directed to the defendant become disproportional to their misconduct since the charges will be misaligned to the morals, customs, common sense, and norms. The disproportionality of charges arises from the fact that the prosecutor works subjectively in sourcing for evidence. When cases where the overcharged defendants get to the trial stage, the defense or the court, poses questions on the evidence and counts against the defendant revealing the disproportionality, thus indicating the prosecutor’s failure in exercising their discretion in making reasonable charging decisions. In the case of the United States v. Schales, some charges are disproportional since similar evidence is adopted in supporting different counts. Therefore, introducing the element of overcharging makes it possible to accommodate disproportional charges that negatively affect the entire case.
Additionally, the overcharging of defendants introduces prosecutorial insincerity that negatively affects the judicial process at the expense of justice legal cases. Overcharging the defendant involves the prosecutor’s misuse of charges since the prosecutor engages in filling excessive charges, or charges without subjective interest the extra counts to conviction (Headworth and Ossei, 2017). The prosecutor uses the additional or the insignificant counts as bargaining chips. The many and excess charges hold the possibility of dismissal or reduction of the charges in exchange for the defendant taking a guilty plea or no contest plea to other charges. The prosecutor’s subjective interest to dismiss the surplus charges indicates the vague overcharging claim. The prosecutor’s insincerity arises from the coercive bargaining plea that inclines the defendant to enter a guilty plea in exchange for lesser charges. On the contrary, the defendant needs to be charged under genuine and factual charges, then the due process of the law need to be employed in prosecuting the charges. In the case of the United States v. Schales, the additional charges could be used as bargaining chips for Schales to enter a guilty plea under the circumstances that one of the charges to be dropped. Therefore, the defendants’ overcharging displays the prosecutor’s insincerity that overlooks justice, fairness, and equality in the interest of forcing the legal cases to go through without following the due process of the law.
Conclusion
The law enforcers and prosecutors have adopted the defendant’s overcharging aspect to ensure that criminal and civil cases sail through in the trial process at the expense of justice, fairness, and equality for all the parties involved in a legal matter. In this regard, the United States v. Schales case has indicated the aspect of overcharging, where the prosecutor introduces extra counts or broadening the existing charge with the view of convicting the defendant at all costs. The overcharging element introduces different barriers, pitfalls, and challenges in the trial stage, thus denying justice to the parties to criminal proceedings or presenting the prosecutor in a bad light.

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References
Ball, J. D. (2006 – Write a paper; Professional research paper writing service – Best essay writers). Is it a prosecutor’s world? Determinants of count bargaining decisions. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 22(3), 241-260.
Crane, P. T. (2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). Charging on the Margin. Wm. & Mary L. Rev., 57, 775.
Floyd J. T. & Sinclair B (2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). Prosecutorial Overcharging: Multiple Counts, Lesser-Get custom essay samples and course-specific study resources via course hero homework for you service – Include d Offenses and Double Jeopardy.
Headworth, S., & Ossei-Owusu, S. (2017). The accused poor. Social Justice, 44(2-3 (148), 55-82.
Kutateladze, B. L., & Lawson, V. Z. (2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). How bad arrests lead to bad prosecution: Exploring the impact of prior arrests on plea bargaining. Cardozo L. Rev., 37, 973.
Lang, L. N. (2013). Prosecutorial overcharging as state crime?. In State Crime in the Global Age (pp. 198-206). Willan.

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