The Criminal Law Handbook: Know Your Rights, Survive the System by Paul Bergman

Description

Take the mystery out of criminal law. Criminal law can be a maze of conflicting principles, strange jargon, and confusing procedures. Professor Paul Bergman unravels the mysteries with an engaging plain-English style that incorporates real-life examples, famous films, and entertaining hypotheticals. From arraignment through sentencing, from “abuse excuse” to vigilante, this handy desk reference explains it all. You'll get answers to questions such as:When can police officers enter your home? Is cyber-bullying illegal? Is intoxication ever a criminal defense? What are the “fruits of the poisonous tree”? Can the police search your car?Criminal Law: A Desk Reference will assist students, bloggers, journalists, mystery writers, and anyone else interested in the criminal justice system or law enforcement.

Editorial Review

No one's above the law, but nearly everyone breaks it at some point or another. Whether it's flashing lights pulling you over to the side or an auditor looking grimly through your tax receipts, there may come a time when you'll want to know more, in a personal sort of way, about arraignments and voir dire, habeas corpus, and just how bail works. Lawyers Bergman and Berman-Barrett cover it all in a straightforward, uncomplicated manner. Addressing police questioning and the law of search and seizure, criminal defense options and common defense strategies, acceptable courtroom behavior, basic criminal trial rules, and a walk through the trial process to parole, this is a strikingly accessible tome of information one hopes to never need. But in the event that you do, it's here and available in the kind of language you can understand and the wealth of detail and example you can use. –Stephanie Gold