Cja 224 – Due Process
Due Process
CJA/224
One December 2011
Due process
In 1868, partially to clarify vagueness and confusion with due process interpretation, the United States Constitution was amended with the Fourteenth Amendment. Prior to this amendment, states could violate citizen’s civil rights because the Fifth Amendment only addressed due process at a federal level. Due process emphasizes the idea that the government is accountable to the citizens and that public scrutiny of the legal process is not only desirable but also necessary to help ensure equality and justice. “Due process of law is a legal concept that ensures the government will respect all of a persons legal rights instead of just some or most of those legal rights, when the government deprives a person of life, liberty, or property. Due process has also been interpreted as placing limitations on laws and legal proceedings in order to guarantee fundamental fairness, justice, and liberty.” (“Due process,” 2010) In a nutshell, due process is the assurance a person has certain rights afforded him or her and can exercise those rights.
The adversarial system
The term adversarial system refers to the legal system in use in America today. The main players in this adversarial scenario are the prosecution team, the defense team, and the judge, or jurors those teams attempt to persuade. The prosecution is the state, and the defense is the accused and his or her attorney. The prosecution and defense teams attempt to collect evidence or produce testimony of experts and witnesses to solidify their case or create doubt about their opponent’s case in the mind of the judge or jurors. A theory of the adversarial system is that when opposing legal teams butt heads in a courtroom environment to uncover facts and find the best resolution, truth, and justice will prevail. Put another way, there are three sides to every story (crime); yours, mine, and usually somewhere in the middle lies the truth. The premise that all persons accused of a crime are innocent until proven guilty is one of the guiding principles in the United States legal adversarial system. The comparison between the adversarial legal system and a sporting event appears valid, each has opposing teams competing against each other, abiding by a specific set of rules and a referee oversees the process (Meyer & Grant, 2003).
Rights of the accused
The prosecutor has the legal burden of proving the state’s