Criminal Case V Civil Action
CJ 230: Criminal Law for Criminal Justice
Amanda Rudloff April 29, 2014
Scenario Brent Lightfoot stood in his kitchen covered in the blood of his best friend, Greg Williams. When did a friendship built from child hood turn into murder? Brent smiled because now Katelyn would be his. He waited by the phone after cleaning up because he knew when Katelyn returned home and found Greg she would call Brent for consoling. Brent went to Greg’s home to tell him that he and Katelyn had been seeing each other and the child she was carrying was his, but that conversation turned into Greg punching him and trying to push him out of the door. Brent pulled out …show more content…
The civil action proceeding is the legal proceeding in which an individual, and not the state, files a law suit because they have been harmed. The law suit is generally filed in the district court that has jurisdiction over the complaint and the plaintiff seeks equitable resolution (Yesilevch 2013). In the US, civil law makes up the largest number of cases in our legal system. An action in civil court begins when a lawsuit is filed against someone whom is believed to have wronged another individual. These courts are designed to resolve disputes between individuals with whom are believed to have been hurt physically or financially by each other and a legal remedy is pursued (Scott 2014). The burden of proof in a civil action is to prove the case beyond a preponderance of the evidence, which means your case must be believed over the other party’s case. This burden of proof is a lot less than the burden of proof needed in a criminal case therefore civil cases have been won against defendants that were proven not guilty in the criminal court of law. Just as the case of OJ Simpson, Brent was found not guilty in the Alexandria criminal court proceeding but was found liable to Katelyn in the wrongful death lawsuit that Katelyn filed with the Alexandria district court. Katelyn was able to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Brent because he caused the death of her husband, Greg. The evidence was brought before a jury in the district courts and the jury believed Katelyn over Brent and found that Brent was to pay a monetary judgment to Katelyn. Unlike in the criminal case, Brent was never in danger of facing any jail time because the most common remedy that is given in a civil case is that of monetary