Working Draft Prompt

The working draft assignment will require you to

• write clear prose about the criminal legal process;
• effectively integrate precedent cases into prose and cite these cases appropriately.
• articulate key concepts and trends in the current law pertaining to Brady violations of Due Process in the context of post-conviction relief and law enforcement use of confidential informants in California.

Guidelines:

• You will write a working draft objectively assessing whether the Superior Court of Orange County would hold that the OCSD and OCDA deprived Daniel Wozniak of his Due Process rights through their use of a custodial informant.
• While our client is Daniel Wozniak, your prediction of what the Superior Court will do should be objective, which means, “expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations.”
• You will use all of the all 6 precedent cases to determine the applicable rule.
• You will compare all of the precedent cases to the facts of Daniel Wozniak’s case when applying the rule.
• The working draft should be comprised of paragraphs. An outline is insufficient to test whether you understand the relationships among precedent cases and how those cases apply to Daniel Wozniak’s case.
• The working draft should be organized following the paradigm for writing a single-issue discussion:

Rule Explanation:

• State the issue
• State the applicable rule of law
• Explain where the rule comes from and what it means

________________________

Rule Application:

• Explain how the rule applies to your clients facts
• State your conclusion

Deliverables:

The working draft must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document and follow the format of the sample working draft parts on pages 86-88 and 100-102.

Additional Assistance:

See Chapters 7-10 in the Legal Writing textbook for more on working drafts.

See pages 86-88 for a sample Rule Explanation section (the first half of a working draft).

See pages 100-102 for a sample Rule Application section (the last half of a working draft).