Features of this contemporary casebook include:

• Thematic approach to the adjudication, highlighting:
  • the key institutional relationships (and occasional conflicts) between courts, legislatures, prosecutors, and juries that affect the handling of cases within the criminal justice system, as seen most notably in such areas as charging decisions, plea bargaining, and sentencing law and policy; and
  • the latent (but perhaps inherent) tension between lay participation in criminal cases (i.e., the jury) and the core criminal justice values of accurate and unbiased adjudication.
• Recent and important developments in the areas of ineffective assistance and self-representation.
• Discussion of the Supreme Court's recent line of Miranda decisions, as well as the recent dismantling of Michigan v. Jackson doctrine regarding the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
• Discussion of pretrial screening and the grand jury.
• In-depth coverage of the scope of the prosecution, including venue, as well as speedy trial, joinder, and severance.
• Up-to-the-minute treatment of the Crawford doctrine, covering the scope and meaning of the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him.
• Completely new and comprehensive coverage of the Apprendi-Blakely-Booker doctrine, reflecting both the legal and the practical consequences of applying the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial to sentencing factors.