Double Jeopardy Pros And Cons

598 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The 5th amendment from the bill of rights

The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution outlines basic legal rights relevant to civil and criminal legal proceedings. The 5th Amendment guarantees the right to a grand jury, forbids “double jeopardy”, and protects against self-incrimination. It also requires that “due process of law” take part in any proceeding that denies a citizen “life, liberty, or property”and that the government gives equal compensation to the owner before seizing private property. Grand juries originated hundreds of years ago in Britain. They originally served to protect defendants against irrational prosecutions from English monarch. Usually containing 12-23 members, the grand jury acts as an investigative body that assess the need for bringing a criminal charge against a suspect, making it “a kind of buffer or referee between the Government and the people.” United States v. Williams, 504 U.S. 36, 37 (1992). …show more content…

The Double Jeopardy Clause protects people against double jeopardy and financial, emotional, or social consequences of continuous punishments, and prevents the government from overusing its superiority to continuously convict innocent people.However, the double jeopardy clause only pertains to proceedings brought by federal or state governments, not to ones brought by individuals. Also, it does not protect criminals who have been charged with crime and punishment from being charged with money damages. One example of this are the trials of OJ Simpson. Along with being charged with murder, he was charged with money damages from the families of the victims.Simpson was not protected by the Double Jeopardy Clause because it does not apply to civil charges following criminal

Show More
Related

  • Dwight Dexter Case Study

    693 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Sixth Amendment states that the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury. However, Dexter was in jail for 25 years since 1982, and the appeal was still in process to the Supreme Court. Also, based on the jury selection on exhibit B, document one, there were only white people in the final jury, and African Americans were struck peremptory by prosecution. Dexter did not have an impartial jury because white people may favor his opposed side due to the different race. According to Batson v. Kentucky, the USSC also determined that peremptory challenges used to exclude jurors on the basis of race could be challenged by the defendant. It was not fair for Dexter to not have the same race people as him in the jury. In addition, the Sixth Amendment also says that both federal and state courts must provide a lawyer if the accused cannot afford to hire one. Even though Dexter did have an attorney, his attorney was not organized and prepared. The adequate attorney was not as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment because he admitted that “he has not been to the crime scene, or viewed the crime scene photographs…has not viewed the prosecution’s witness list.” He had not done anything that could help defend Dexter. He didn't even call witnesses in the court to help Dexter. Strickland v. Washington also supports this because the court upheld the defendant’s conviction that his rights had been violated when his lawyer did not provide enough evidence to avoid the death

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Japanese Internment

    2436 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Constitution guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without being taken to court for a fair trial, but that means nothing if the people are not willing to uphold it (Fifth Amendment).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of My Cousin Vinny

    1232 Words  | 3 Pages

    What the Grand Jury does is rather simple, but a very necessary feature of the American court process. The purpose of the Grand Jury is “to determine whether there is enough evidence for the case to proceed to trial” (Miller, 2015). It makes perfect sense as to why the director of the film did not include this process, due to the fact that during the Grand Jury process, all of the evidence against the defendants gets presented to the judge (Miller, 2015). If the director were to present this as a scene in the movie, there would be no surprise as to what the prosecutor would produce as evidence, which for the film, would make it less suspenseful. This leads us into the next step, and that is the Discovery Process. In the movie, Vinny believes that he seduced Jim Trotter to give him his files on the case. Vinny was surprised at how easily he received the documents,until his fiancé (Mona Lisa Vito) tells him that the prosecutor had to share them with him, and this is part of the discovery process. The prosecution is legally bound to share its information with the defense.

    Read More

  • Australia's Unfair Legal System

    821 Words  | 2 Pages

    They weigh the evidence and apply the law. In the court system, criminal law is interpreted by a jury who are seen as expressing the sense of justice of ordinary men and women. Juries date back to the Middle Ages in England, and while membership, role, and importance have changed throughout the ages, they were part of the system of England’s Common Law. The purpose of the jury system was to ensure the civil rights of the ordinary citizen. It is important to remember that at the time, ordinary people had few rights.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Fifth Amendment

    903 Words  | 2 Pages

    This is derived from the rights Americans have to not be forced to testify against themselves in a criminal case. But, the Fifth Amendment also protects against double jeopardy and gives people charged with a felony the right to a grand jury indictment (Bohm & Haley, 2011). Double jeopardy basically states that if a conviction or acquittal was reached in a criminal case, the person can no longer be tried again for the same offense (Bohm & Haley, 2011). The procedural rights for self-incrimination are also applied to any custodial situations the police conduct. To ensure that statements, or confessions a suspect makes are allowed in court there is a two-prong tests that should be followed. First, is the person considered to be in a custodial situation and two, are the police intending to ask incriminating questions. If yes is the answers to both then the suspect must be read his or her rights. This is known as giving someone his or her Miranda rights derived from the famous case

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Plea Bargains

    1170 Words  | 3 Pages

    Texas houses the largest prison population in the nation (National News). I am not surprised by this statement. I agree with Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson’s statement, "Texas has always been a law and order state, and the prison system has been known as a tough system”. In my opinion, Texas has high crime statistics because of the high rate of re-offenders. According to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, “four of ten offenders released from prison will be reincarcerated after three years”. Offenders are leaving prison without being rehabilitated for the crime they committed.

    Read More

  • Miranda V. Arizona

    543 Words  | 2 Pages

    we must first fully understand what rights citizens welcome Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. What are the "Miranda" rights?

    Read More

  • The Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment

    2077 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth-Amendment to many American citizens and law makers is considered abstract. The complexity of this concept can easily be traced back to its beginning in which it lacked an easily identifiable principle. Since its commencement in 1789 the United States Judicial system has had a hard time interpreting and translating this vague amendment. In many cases the courts have gone out of their way to protect the freedoms of the accused. The use of three major Supreme Court disputes will show the lengths these Justices have gone through, in order to preserve the rights and civil liberties of three criminals, who were accused of heinous crimes and in some cases were supposed to face up to a lifetime in federal prison.

    Read More

  • Seventh Amendment Essay

    532 Words  | 2 Pages

    The right to have trial by jury is an easy and simple right letting someone to be able to choose to have their fate be decide by a group of people with having different opinions from different minds letting them have a better chance of finding out the truth, because people have different perspectives in what they see. Which is also a very important right to the freedom we have and to our country. In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Which defines as if someone gets charged over twenty dollars, then they’re able to ask for a jury to hear their side of the case before they lose their money and once the jury makes their decision they can not change it. This Amendment is important to our freedom because into the decision of the Farmers while they were writing on the Bill of Rights they thought it would only be fair to have an equal court system.

    Read More

  • The History of Juries

    590 Words  | 2 Pages

    The modern US version of a jury derived from ancient English law. It is said in the early 11th century, William the Conqueror brought a form of a jury system from Normandy that became the basis for early England’s juries. It was constructed of men who were sworn by oath to tell the king what they knew. King Henry II then expanded on the idea by using a group of white men with good morals to not only judge the accused, but also to investigate crimes. King Henry II had panels of 12 everyday, law abiding men; this aspect of it is much like modern juries. The difference is that these early jurors were “self-informing”. This means that they were expected to already have knowledge of the facts that would be presented in court prior to the trial. King Henry II’s first jurors were assigned the job of resolving the land disputes that were occurring in England. ...

    Read More

  • Fifth Amendment Pros And Cons

    547 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that ‘no person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.’ U.S. Const. amend. V. The related provision in the Tennessee Constitution states that ‘in all criminal prosecutions, the accused . . . shall not be compelled to give evidence against himself.’ Tenn. Const. art. I, § 9.” State v. Blackstock, 19 S.W.3d 200, 2000 Tenn. LEXIS 168 (Tenn. 2000). The Supreme court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that before a subject can be questioned by the police they must be warned that they have the right to remain silent, that anything they say can be used against them, that they have a right to an attorney, and that if they cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed to them before interrogation

    Read More

  • The Sixth Amendment

    1917 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Sixth Amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791. It guarantees rights related to criminal prosecutions in federal courts and it was ruled that these rights are fundamental and important. The Sixth Amendment gives the accused the right to speedy and public trial by the impartial jury. The accused has the right to be informed of the nature and reason of accusation and also be confronted with the witness against him as well as obtaining witness in his favor. In this research paper I will provide a thorough analysis of these above rights and give some history of the 6th Amendment.

    Read More

  • Fifth Amendment Essay

    1021 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides, "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury…nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property… nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation"(Cornell). The clauses within the Fifth Amendment outline constitutional limits on police procedure. Within them there is protection against self-incrimination, it protects defendants from having to testify if they may incriminate themselves through the testimony. A witness may plead the fifth and not answer to any questioning if they believe it can hurt them (Cornell). The Bill of Rights, which consists of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, enumerates certain basic personal liberties. Laws passed by elected officials that infringe on these liberties are invalidated by the judiciary as unconstitutional. The Fifth Amendment was ratified in 1791; the Framers of the Fifth Amendment intended that its revisions would apply only to the actions of the federal government. After the Fourteenth was ratified, most of the Fifth Amendment's protections were made applicable to the states. Under the Incorporation Doctrine, most of the liberties set forth in the Bill of Rights were made applicable to state governments through the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment (Burton, 2007).

    Read More

  • The First Eight Amendments

    640 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Fifth amendment which was passed by Congress on September 25, 1789 and was ratified on December 15, 1791 states that “providing chiefly that no person be required to testify against himself or herself in a criminal case and that no person be subjected to a second trial for an offense for which he or she has been duly tried previously.” This means that the defendant does not have to testify why he or she is guilty or not guilty. This amendment also protects against double jeopardy. Double jeopardy is the prosecution of a person twice

    Read More

  • Double Jeopardy Argumentative Essay

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    Essentially, it prevents someone from being charged twice for the same exact crime. Double Jeopardy applies to both the federal courts and state courts. It also applies to juveniles as well, since prosecutors have the option to try a juvenile as an adult. U.S. v. Lanza was a case law that was decided in 1922 that made a direct impact on the interpretation of Double Jeopardy and the Fifth Amendment right. In brief, Lanza was a bootlegger that was tried and convicted in two separate courts for

    Read More

More about Double Jeopardy Pros And Cons

Open Document