The text describes the criminal process in terms most relevant to the practitioner, connecting the analysis of the process to the concept of proof. It also focuses in detail on the specific legal and practice problems that attorneys must address in asserting and proving claims at each state in the development and resolution of a criminal case. The discussion describes how prosecutors and defense attorneys identify issues to be proven, how they try to prove them at each state of the Federal criminal process for the decision to charge through the determination of the sentence, and the various advocacy skills required of the litigating attorney. Individual sections focus on case theory, the burden of proof, the assertion of claims, proof, the stages of a police-initiated case, and the stages of a prosecutor- initiated case. Case examples, footnotes, table of statutes and rules, table of cases, and index