The Rights of the Accused during Trial - The Adversarial System, The Burden Of Proof, The Right To Counsel, Witnesses And The Right Of Confrontation

The Rights of the Accused during Trial - The Adversarial System

American justice is based on the adversarial, or accusatory, system, as opposed to the inquisitional system. Under the latter, a magistrate--or a king or religious official--takes an active role in determining facts and making judgments, while defense lawyers (assuming any are allowed) remain in the background, only speaking when asked to speak. This description calls forth a number of images, non…

The Rights of the Accused during Trial - The Burden Of Proof

The "beyond all reasonable doubt" phrase, though it is not found in the Constitution, nonetheless remains a bedrock principle of the American legal system. It does not mean, however, that guilt must be proven beyond all doubt. This would be not be possible, any more than it would be possible to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the sun will rise in the morning and go down in the evening. The…

The Rights of the Accused during Trial - The Right To Counsel

The Sixth Amendment makes a number of guarantees affecting the rights of the accused both before and during trial, among them the right to legal counsel. The accused may choose to represent himself, though this is seldom advisable. Aside from the obvious fact that a lawyer knows much more about the law than a layman does, there is the simple reality that a person often lacks perspective in matters…

The Rights of the Accused during Trial - Witnesses And The Right Of Confrontation

The Sixth Amendment directs that the accused must "be confronted with the witnesses against him" and must "have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor." The first of these provisions, often called the right of confrontation, is closely tied with another Sixth Amendment right, that of being informed of the accusation. It means that any witness whose testimony plays a part in the pr…

The Rights of the Accused during Trial - Trial By Jury And Other Rights

The Constitution provides for trial by jury not only in the Eighth Amendment, but in Article III. In addition, the Seventh Amendment provides for jury trial in civil cases. Petit juries, as opposed to the grand juries which conduct the hearings to hand down an indictment earlier in the legal process, are usually composed of 12 people chosen from the citizenry at large--thus the oft-quoted phrase "…

The Rights of the Accused during Trial - Further Readings