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The judicial process involves very many aspects from the legal filing of the case to the sentencing or conviction of the perpetrator of a criminal act. Most judicial processes involve majorly two sides, which each side is trying to prove their side of the argument to the judge or to the jury. The most significant aspect of the judicial proceedings are the facts and evidence provided to the court, which helps in guiding the reasoning that substantiates the result of the process. Ideally, there are two results of the judicial process, one of them being the guilty plea, which follows a reasonable or considerable sentencing while the other is the innocent, which sets the defendant free of the charges brought against him or her in court. The result of the judicial process comes due to the various arguments provided by the legal counsels for the opposing sides of the court case. With regard to the Andrea Yate’s case, there are different people who play different roles in guiding the result of the judicial proceedings. Most of these elements prove significant to the process.
One of the most important elements of the judicial proceedings of the Andrea Yate’s case is the professional doctors who come up with the diagnosis of one being mentally ill or not. In this case, psychiatrists provided an important input in the case by substantiating the defendant’s claim of insanity to plead a plea of insanity in the court. A plea of insanity provides the court with a different fundamental framework of trying the defendant. The arguments provided by the legal professionals work towards enabling the judge to make a sufficient basis for argument or reasoning as to how or why they have made the final decision.
The most fundamental aspect of any judicial proceeding is the evidence provided to the court by either the prosecutor or the defence counsel. However, in the Andrea Yate case, the most significant piece of evidence that would have changed the course of the trial was the proof of mental illness that would justify the crime committed by Andrea Yate. The information that would prove to the court beyond any doubt that the defendant was mentally ill and therefore had no reasoning capacity to make them realize what they were doing was wrong by nature, law or human sense of morality.
Furthermore, one fundamental aspect of the judicial process concerning the Andrea Yate’s case was the prior cases that were basically related to the current one. The cases provided information that would guide the legal profession, in this case, the judge to determine whether or not the claim to the court against the defendant is true or false. Apart from the arguments provided to the court by opposing legal counsel, the judge or the jury has to rely upon other significant sources of information to ascertain the probability of the insanity plea by the defendant being true or false in nature. All the information or knowledge sources mentioned above might prove to be significant in the course of the proceedings. Nonetheless, the verdict is made with regard to conscious thought from either the judge or the jury committee, which is considered the most crucial aspect of the judicial proceedings.
References
McLellan, F. (2006). Mental health and justice: The case of Andrea Yates. Lancet, 368(9551), 1951-1954. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69789-4
