Courtroom and the Jurisdiction - Essay Example

Federal courts have limited jurisdiction. They can only hear cases falling within the area or scope defined by the Constitution of the United States or the federal statutes. The writer has chosen the bombing case at Boston Marathon where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev murdered three people and injured over 250 people after detonating a bomb during the Boston Marathon in 2013. Concerning jurisdiction and seriousness of the crime, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged in a federal court rather than state courts of Massachusetts.

Dzhokhar was charged with thirty counts including maliciously damaging and destroying property with an explosive device, and conspiring to use a mass destruction weapon. The federal government can prosecute cases that fall within the federal jurisdiction. United States attorneys may decide to prosecute their cases concurrently with state crimes prosecution, or they may choose to prosecute from the state courts (Index to Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2008). In the case of Tsarnaev, federal prosecutors give importance to death sentencing.

This may have been the only reason that the feds took over the state’s authority and why Dzhokhar underwent trial in the federal court rather than state court. A death penalty is prohibited in some states in the U.S.Several high profile cases recently have shown that innocent defendants sometimes plead guilty. More shocking is that in most of these cases, the defendant is known to be innocent or that people suspect his innocence at the time of entering the plea. On 19 August 2011, Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were released from prison almost 18 years after they were arrested in relation to murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis.

Their freedom came at a cost of pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit. The plea bargain secured their freedom, but the three men will be considered as convicted murderers (Hemmens, 2009).