Amendment Six: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
The sixth amendment, clearly and pretty thoroughly, sets forth the entire basis for our criminal justice system. It logically follows the part of the fifth that guarantees no citizen will be brought up on charges without solid evidence to back them up by outlining what happens when the case is found to have merit. These are the guidelines that the founding fathers meant to be our legal compass in all matters of jurisprudence.
First, we’re guaranteed the right to a speedy trial. The founding fathers were clever guys. They realized, right off, that there was a huge end-run around the whole bit in the fifth about not being incarcerated long-term without a conviction. You just arrest someone and take fifteen to life to get around to seeing if there’s any real crime there.
The problem that they didn’t foresee is that we’re very, very fond of putting laws on the books and horrible at taking them off. Whether it’s because we’re too willing to hold on to tradition or, much more likely, politicians, like the rest of us, don’t want to seem like idiots when a decision they’ve made turns out to be total crap, this tendency to keep things on the book after their efficacy has run its course has led to endless email forwards and a justice system so backed up that its considered a speedy trial to get a court date the same year you were arrested.
The second bit is that you get a public trial. Back then, it was meant to assure that the proceedings went down without a hitch or any misconduct on the part of those running it. It made perfect sense. Nowadays, though, when the misery of others has become our greatest joy, watching the court system in action has become a spectacle and, it could be argued, one which does more harm than good. A fair middle ground would be to keep it truly as they intended. Allow the courtroom to be open to the public, but not the media. That way, you don’t end up with mistrials because the jury saw a newspaper or television show where their favorite celebrity provided their opinion for them.
Speaking of juries, the right to a trial by jury was one of the absolute most important to the founding fathers, and early Americans, in general. It was actually one of the biggest reasons we went to war with England to begin with, when they decided to start taking those who broke importing laws (see smugglers, rampant in the colonies) to Nova Scotia for private trials. Wanting none of that, and rightly so, they laid out that you get a trial in the area where the crime was committed, unless extreme circumstances warrant otherwise, with your guilt or innocence decided by the average citizen. I will forego any assumptions regarding the qualification of the average American these days to make an informed decision.
Next up, you have to be informed, right off, of the crime of which you’re being accused. I realize this seems like a no-brainer, but think back once again to the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay. The Patriot Act suspended this by saying you could be held indefinitely on suspected terrorist activities. That’s it. No specific charges. Imagine sitting in your house, writing a blog entry, and having men with guns burst in and arrest you without telling you why. How horrifying would that be? That’s what it was like during the colonial period, before these rights were laid out, as many a revolutionary discovered.
When you are brought to trial, with an empaneled jury, you have the right to face your accuser. This one has been one of the big, deep controversies of our justice system almost since its inception. While it’s necessary, in order to prevent that whole fabrication of evidence thing (I heard it from a little bird that you have a freezer in your basement where you do unspeakable things to cats, what say you?), it’s created a real problem with the system.
Volunteering for a sexual assault agency, one of the hard truths you learn about trials for those brought up on rape charges is that the victim, because of this tenet right here, has to go into the courtroom to testify, looking into the eyes of the person who hurt them so gravely again. While it’s liberating for some, it’s incredibly traumatic for others. What’s worse, while we guarantee this right to the accused, the victim is allowed little or no support in the courtroom while it’s going on. Something’s obviously not right there.
That being said, as the defendant, you’re allowed witnesses to support your statement. Again, you being allowed to put up a cogent defense would seem like a gimme, but it wasn’t always the case. Old trials, even those with a jury, as they were at the time in Britain, were often just a parade of evidence against the accused until the jury had heard enough. This made sure that couldn’t happen.
Finally, in order to make sure that you don’t need a juris doctorate to make sure your own case is running as it should be, they added that you would have a lawyer, even if you couldn’t afford to pay for your own. Defense attorneys, despite their reputations, are actually incredibly necessary to keeping the court system honest, though one could argue that they’re part of the problem, too. I just won’t, because that’s a whole other article, right there.
So the fifth and sixth amendments guarantee you the right to keep your mouth shut about what you’ve done, the right to legal counsel to guide you through the process, the right to a speedy trial…any of this sounding familiar? It should, as you’ve heard it a thousand times on any procedural show. The Miranda Rights were created in 1966 to make sure that everyone, even the most backwater, out-of-touch person, would be aware of the rights laid out here. The Supreme Court decided, and rightly so, that they were that important, and reasonably so.
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