Amendment VI

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 defense.

My opinion: The part that sticks out the most to me in the Amendment is "to be confronted with the witnesses against him," I think this is working against the system now days. If you are a witness to crime, most people are afraid to be on the witness stand in fear of the repercutions of their actions. Maybe they live in a neighborhood where if you squeal then you know your fait. It is preventing people from standing up against these criminals and putting them behind bars.


Sixth Amendment Violation



My Opinion: This is an embarrassment to the judicial system. As a judge you need to be aware of the Amendments and know how to handle a situation that violates one of these amendments. If there was a extreme verdict to this case, the defendant could fall back on the impartial jury. Totally ridiculous that he just over looked it so easily.

Court Upholds Sixth Amendment Rights
By ANNE GEARANThe Associated PressMonday, 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: This was clearly a mistake on the police's part. Trying to trick the defendant into confessing by illegally showing him tape of his so called wife's story. Luckily the court system caught it and overthrew the case. It's times like these when we are glad to have these Amendments protecting us.