The Criminal Justice System: A Guide for Law Enforcement ... - NHTSA

commonly used when the judge believes the defendant deserves punishment, but wants
to allow the defendant to continue to work at his or her job.
An “indeterminate sentence” is a State prison sentence with two numbers
defining the term in years, a minimum and a maximum. The sentence is indeterminate in
the sense that the parole board, not the judge, determines the defendant’s release date.
Examples of indeterminate sentences are sentences of 1 to 3 years, or 2 to 4 years, or 15
years to life.
Finally, a “determinate sentence” or “fixed sentence” is a State prison
sentence having a single number of years. Examples are: 1.5 years, 6 years, or 15
years. The sentence is “determinate” in that no parole board is involved in making
the release decision.
The term imposed by the sentencing judge can be misleading because in many
States, as an inducement to good behavior while incarcerated, defendants can earn the
right to be released earlier than their stated terms. These inducements include good time,
merit time, conditional release, parole release, and other things.
If there are multiple sentences of imprisonment imposed upon a defendant, the
sentences will run either “concurrently” or “consecutively.” “Concurrently” means that
all the sentences run at the same time and all are satisfied when the longest one is done.
“Consecutively” means the sentences are served one at a time, so the sum of the terms is
what governs. To make matters even more confusing, some of the sentences may be
imposed to run concurrently to each other but consecutively to others. Depending on the
circumstances, the choice of concurrent or consecutive may be dictated by statute, or
may be left to the judge’s discretion.
Stop Temporary detention of an individual for investigation. To be legal, a stop
must be based on reasonable suspicion to believe the individual has committed, or is
about to commit, some violation of the law. If the stop yields information to confirm the
suspicion, the stop may escalate into an arrest.
For example, upon seeing a car weaving back and forth over the center line, an
officer would have reasonable suspicion to believe the driver might be intoxicated. The
officer could then stop the car, talk to the driver, and administer field sobriety tests. If
that investigation confirms that the driver is intoxicated, the officer would then have
probable cause to believe the driver was intoxicated and could lawfully arrest the driver
for the crime of Driving While Intoxicated.
Suppression of Evidence A court ruling disallowing evidence due to
unconstitutional conduct by law enforcement officers. Suppression of evidence means the
court has invoked the exclusionary rule. Evidence may be reliable, yet still be suppressed
because it was obtained in an illegal manner.
The evidence sought to be suppressed is usually either (1) an incriminating
statement made to a police officer, (2) physical items of evidence seized by the police,
37