How do judges decide?

How do judges decide? Discuss the factors judges legitimately consider when imposing sentences, and what scholarly studies indicate may also be influencing judges’ sentencing decisions.

 

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE! FOLLOW MY STYLE:

 

The courtroom work group is composed of each entity that is instrumental to the criminal justice system within the confines of a trial. The key players that comprise the courtroom work group are the judge, defense attorney, prosecuting attorney, the jury, the bailiff, the defendant, the stenographer, and oftentimes, the media. Each of these roles play a pivotal part in ensuring that our criminal justice system is being operationalized as close to the mandates of the constitution as possible. The entities all work individually and in concert with one another according to the hierarchy of their role and its relevance to different parts of a trial. The hierarchy exists to ensure that details of the case are being best handled by those with specialized roles (Spohn, 2019).
In order to control the processing of criminal cases, details and duties of the courtroom work group rise through the aforementioned hierarchy. When a case goes to trial, there is a general order of operations in which each entity of the courtroom work group has a specific and important role. The attorneys will each present their arguments along with relevant pieces of evidence to the jury before the judge. The judge is strategically positioned in the courtroom to reflect the pinnacle of the hierarchy. Once the arguments have been presented, the attention gets turned toward the jury when they will be instructed on what is expected from them moving forward. The judge will explain the charges being levied against the defendant and the process for deliberation. The jury will exit the courtroom and enter another room to talk amongst themselves regarding their decision for each of the charges. The jury must collectively be able to defend their decision beyond a reasonable doubt. When the jury returns to the courtroom, the foreman whose job it is to speak on behalf of their fellow jurors will read each charge and give their verdict individually. This whole process can only be successful when each part of the courtroom work group is made clearly and explicitly aware of what is expected of them in their roles.
References
Spohn, C., Hemmens, C., & McCann, W. S. (2019). Courts: A text/reader. SAGE Publications, Inc.