Prosecutors’ Charging Decisions in Sexual Assault Cases

Prosecutors’ Charging Decisions in Sexual Assault Cases June 8, 2012 â€Å" Case screening is the gateway to the criminal justice system. Prosecutors, acting as gatekeepers, decide which instances of alleged victimization will be passed on for adjudication by the courts† (Frohmann, 1991, p. 213). As Supreme Court Justice Jackson acknowledged in 1940, â€Å"the prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America† (Davis, 1969, p.190). Frohmann examined the powerful discretion prosecutors have in their justification for sexual assault case rejections in her research article, Discrediting Victim’s allegations of Sexual Assault: Prosecutorial Accounts of Case Rejections. Her research was replicated†¦show more content†¦Spohn, Beichner, and Davis-Frenzel do not conduct a field study as Frohmann does, instead they examined all sexual assault cases cleared by arrest in Miami Florida in 1997. They did however replicate Frohmann’s design of interviewing a sample of the pros ecutors who handled the cases. By using this different method of research, Spohn, Beichner, and Davis-Frenzel’s are able to show the frequency in which prosecutors used discrepant accounts and ulterior motives to reject cases. This extends upon Frohmann’s research. Their findings that, â€Å"charging decisions primarily reflect the prosecutor’s assessment of the likelihood of conviction† (Spohn, et al. 2001, p. 206) is consistent with Frohmann s Findings. They also agreed with Frohmann’s categories of typifications, however they found that a substantial amount of cases were rejected for reasons other than discrediting the victim such as, the victim’s failure to appear for a pretrial interview, refusal to cooperate in the prosecution of the case, or admission that the charges were fabricated (Spohn, et al. 2001). Spohn, Beichner, and Davis-Frenzel discuss Steffensmeier’s (1998) focal concerns perspective. 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