Sixth Amendment- Jury Trials

"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 where in 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 defense".

In my opinion, the sixth amendment clearly lays out the framework for all criminal trials. First off, the accused are afforded the right to a speedy and public trial. There is no exact definition of speedy but I think the writers of this amendment wanted something that mentioned time so prosecutors and defendants alike could not drag their feet. The trial must be public. I think that this insures fairness. If the public did not know the facts of a case they would not be able to have an opinion about it and object if they thought the accused was being treated unfairly. It is a sort of check for the courts. The jury must be impartial (having no foreknowledge of the case or parties involved)and come from the state in which the crime was committed. Sometimes this is a hard thing to accomplish because people close to the incident (in the same state) are the ones to hear about it and form opinions first. In addition, the accused must be informed of the crime they are being charged with. This ensures that you do not walk into a court case blindly and try to defend yourself. The accused also have the right to physically see the witness who is testifying against them. In some cases this can greatly harm a trial. If the accused is a known thug and has criminal friends on the streets it could be hard to obtain a witness that is willing to stand up and testify against them. However, I believe it is necessary to ensure fairness. The accused is also allowed to have someone that will testify for them. Just because an arrest suggests you committed a crime, you have the right to sustain your innocence until you are proven guilty. Lastly, all parties in a court case are given the right to a lawyer. Many people can not afford one so the courts provide one for them. This is supposed to level the playing field but some feel that the lawyers forced to take these cases do not produce the same quality of work as to those that are being paid.





My Opinion: I chose this article because it is a perfect example of what can happen to witnesses in high profile cases when their identities are exposed. If someone is capable of committing a serious crime like hijacking planes and flying them into the World Trade Center, killing thousands, then they are more than capable of killing one person. The previously mentioned offense is so grave that they will do anything to drag the trial out, or seriously harm it all together. I believe that in cases like this there should be a trial by trial basis for the concealment of the identity of the witnesses. These are the cases that we desperately need to prosecute and to do this we must protect the witnesses who are willing to testify.


"Court Upholds Sixth Amendment Rights"

By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated Press
Monday, March 8, 2004; 1:33 PM

WASHINGTON - The Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant may confront his accusers, and that right means prosecutors can't use a wife's taped statement to police to try to undermine her husband at trial, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The high court sided with a man convicted of assaulting an acquaintance he had accused of trying to rape his wife. Sylvia Crawford did not testify at Michael Crawford's trial, but prosecutors played a tape they claimed showed her story did not match his. Michael Crawford's lawyers had no opportunity to cross-examine Sylvia Crawford about the tape, a unanimous Supreme Court said. "That alone is sufficient to make out a violation of the Sixth Amendment," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. The Sixth Amendment guarantees that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him." All nine justices agreed to throw out Michael Crawford's conviction and return the case to the state court system in Washington. Seven justices also took the unusual step of squarely overruling an earlier case that laid out complex rules for when statements can be used without the opportunity for cross-examination. The 1980 case has needlessly complicated a fairly straightforward part of the Constitution, Scalia wrote. The Constitution's framers were wary of letting judges have too much power, he added. "By replacing categorical constitutional guarantees with open-ended balancing tests, we do violence to their design. Vague standards are manipulable," Scalia wrote. While that "might be a small concern in run-of-the-mill assault prosecutions like this one," the framers had in mind the darker specter of state trials such as Sir Walter Raleigh's in 17th Century England, Scalia wrote. Raleigh demanded that the judges "call my accuser before my face," but they refused. Raleigh was sentenced to death for treason. Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony M. Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer agreed with him. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor dissented from the portion of the ruling that overturned the earlier case, and said the majority was complicating, not clarifying, the rules prosecutors should follow. "The thousands of federal prosecutors and the tens of thousands of state prosecutors need answers as to what beyond the specific kinds of 'testimony' the court lists is covered by the new rule," Rehnquist wrote. The Crawford case began in 1999, when Crawford and his wife went to find Kenneth Lee at his apartment in Olympia, Wash. The two men argued and fought, and Sylvia Crawford saw what happened. Michael Crawford got a cut on his hand that required 12 stitches to close, and he stabbed Lee in the stomach, seriously wounding him. The Crawfords fled the apartment and were arrested that night. They both gave statements to police, but only Michael Crawford said he thought he had seen Lee reach for a weapon before he was stabbed. Sylvia did not testify at her husband's trial because of the law protecting spouses from testifying against one another. Prosecutors used her statement to refute his claim that the stabbing was self-defense. In a closing statement to jurors, a prosecutor called the statement "damning evidence." The case is Crawford v. Washington, 02-9410.


My Opinion: I chose this article for a few reasons. The first is because it is a very real case in which the sixth amendment is valid. Also, the courts have ruled against the sixth amendment in other instances (mentioned above) but reversed their decision this time around. Our justice system does not always get things right but in this circumstance the did eventually. It is somewhat reassuring to me that the supreme court is willing to overturn previous rulings when they realize that earlier justices got it wrong. They are people too and are allowed mistakes as long as they correct them and learn from them.