Comparing Criminal Justice Systems - Assignment Example

As much as criminal justice systems of all countries seem to follow some universal devising justice and punishment, there are wide variations between countries in the ways that these approaches work. This is because of the differences in power of law enforcement, style of policing, limits of search and seizure, the doctrine of presumption innocence and the doctrine of reasonable doubt. Other factors that create differences among criminal justice systems across countries include protection of self-incrimination rights, exclusion rules and other intra-systematic processes in criminal justice, which are not valued and practiced in the same way in every country.

In this report, a comparison of criminal justice systems, based on the cases of Amanda Knox and Michael Fay, two young U.S. citizens accused of crimes in other countries, illustrates the differences between the U.S. criminal justice system and those of Italy and Singapore. The Knox case is a murder case, which is about the murder of a British student, Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. During the time of the crime, all the occupants of the cottage had left to spend their night elsewhere apart from Meredith Kercher, who was to spend the night alone in the cottage.

On the following day, Knox and her boyfriend, Rafaelle Sollecito, discovered that one of the windows of the cottage, where Meredith, Knox and others lived, had been broken. They called the police. The police forced the door to Kercher’s bedroom open and it was discovered that Kercher had been murdered. Knox and Rafaelle were accused of murdering Kercher because the deceased had refused to participate in a sex game. Knox’s boss was also accused on the same account, but he was released upon lack of evidence linking him to the crime.

Forensic evidence led to the arrest, prosecution and conviction of Rudy Guede for murdering Meredith. On the other hand, Michael Fay was sentenced to four months imprisonment and six strokes of cane because