Criminal Law And Civil Litigation Case Study

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Criminal law vs. Civil litigation The law is used to safeguard the lives, freedoms, rights, and property of the citizens (Nonet 34). There are two major bodies of law: criminal law and civil law. Criminal law is a set of rules and statutes that identifies behavior forbidden by the government as it threatens and harms public safety and interests and that determines punishment to be imposed for the commission of search act.
The main purpose of criminal law is to punish the person who perpetrated the crime, for the purpose of passing on a message to the person and the society at large, not to commit the crime; otherwise, they will get punished for committing the act (Schmalleger 85). When a person commits an act that is prohibited by the law he or she risks being prosecuted. In criminal law, the complaint on the crime is first registered with the police, after which the police carry out an …show more content…

In criminal law, if the individual is found guilty of committing a crime, he or she is punished by confinement in prison, a fine, and even a death penalty in some occasions. In contrary, in civil law the losing party is forced to compensate the plaintiff the extent of the loss which is normally determined by the judge and is referred to as punitive damage (Chase 124). A criminal litigation is much more serious compared to a civil litigation, thus the criminal defendants are given more rights and protection than the civil defendants.
The third difference is in the burdens of proof. A burden of proof refers to the obligation the initiating party must fulfill in substantiating his or her case (Walton 15). In criminal case, the burden of proof lies within the government so as to substantiate that the defendant is guilty. In contrast, in criminal case, the burden of proof lies with the plaintiff in order to prove that the defendant is guilty. The defendant then refutes the evidence that the plaintiff brings before the

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