Bill of Rights and The Amendments

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 Table of Contents
i. Introduction
ii. Amendments and bill of rights.
 First Amendment
 Second Amendment
 Third Amendment
 Fourth Amendment
 Fifth Amendment
 Sixth Amendment
 Eighth Amendment
 Table of Contents cont’d

iii. Conclusion
iv. References
 Introduction
 Bill of rights
 Bill of Rights is a fundamental component of the US.
Constitution that was specifically designed to govern the basic
rights of its citizens.
 Originally comprised of 10 Amendments but later, seventeen
other additional Amendments were added.
 The Amendments have an impact in major criminal justice
cases.
 In the year 1789, the first ten Amendments were proposed by
the congress during the first session
 First Amendment
 Freedom of worship, and Freedom of Speech,
Assemble, Print, and Petition
 The first clause was meant to ban religion out of
American politics.
 It assures any unconditional or perfect freedom to
speak out, assemble, print and petition public body in a
context of violence (Kahanovitz, 1991).
 Reaffirms certain civil freedoms that have been
practiced for long and therefore does not assure that
citizens who violets the clauses will go unpunished.
 Second Amendment
 The Right to posses Arms
 The Amendment affirm individual’s rights to bear and keep
arms and limits the Congress.
 However every State has its constitutional way of regulating
the possession and carrying of arms.
 The Amendment has a limitation as ferrying of certain kinds
of weapon and sale guns have been upheld by the Federal
laws.
 The Amendment is also face with uncertainties because the
Federal Courts haven’t outlined to what extend Congress can
restrict the right.
 Third Amendment
 Quartering Troops
 This Bill of Right same the civilians from harassment
and caused by the military (Friendly, 1965).
 The bill of Right is limited in its application because
there is little interpretation from the Supreme Court .
 Fourth Amendment
 Search and Seizure
 Unreasonable search is termed as a search that has no warrant.
Search with reason is however necessary especially when is
related to a lawful arrest.
 The police seek a search warrant from the magistrate before
they can involve in a search. The purpose of this is to ascertain
that the process is of an upright cause to believe that a search
should be carried out.
 A search warrant specifies the property to be seized and the
location or place to be searched.
 Fifth Amendment
 Rights of Persons
 Intended to defend people from illogical treatment by
their seniors.
 The Grand jury must first induce trial by a major crime.
 An individual can not be tried twice on a similar offense
and also an individual cannot be compelled in criminal
cases to testify against themselves.
 Sixth Amendment
 Rights of the Accused.
 It guarantees jury trial in criminal cases.
 It assures right to meet the witnesses and obtain the help
of lawyers and witnesses through the arm of the law
(Wakefield, 1991) .
 The Amendment demands that criminal trials to be
carried out quickly to avoid back load of cases.
 The Eighth Amendment
 Bail and Cruel and Unusual Punishments
 An accused individual is not supposed to be set free by the
courts just because they can produce bail bonds. This is
because the accused person may be dangerous to the
witnesses or may interfere with the jurisdiction of the court.
 Justification ofevidence is a mandatory if bail of a higher
amount than the set standard for the certain crime is imposed.
 Cruel and unusual punishments such as public whipping is
prohibited
 However capital punishment is regarded as usual by the
Supreme Court.
 Conclusion

 The capital punishment enforcement must be followed

carefully so that the jury discretion or discriminate
individual’s class can not be allowed.
 The capital punishment is only regarded as cruel if it is out of
all proportions to the offense.
 References
 Kahanovitz, C. (1991). The Bill of Rights: Implications for the
promotion of procedural and substantive justice in criminal cases.
Criminal Law Forum, 2(3), 569-594.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf01096488
 Friendly, H. (1965). The Bill of Rights as a Code of Criminal
Procedure. California Law Review, 53(4), 929.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3478984
 Wakefield, B. (1991). Book Review: A Right to Bear Arms: State
and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees. Criminal
Justice Review, 16(2), 302-302.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/073401689101600221