The 5th Amendment Privilege Against Self-Incrimination - Essay Sample

Introduction

The Fifth Amendment of the U.S constitution contains several provisions which are commonplace. The amendment protects people from being forced to incriminate others or themselves. An incrimination of oneself refers to exposing oneself or another person to "a charger or an accusation or of crime." It also refers to involving another person or oneself in danger of criminal prosecution. However, the privilege against being compelled to self-incrimination applies to a person's constitutional right to refuse to answer any questions or give testimony against him regarding any case.

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Similarly, according to Blitz, for extensive pleading, the Fifth Amendment on the previlllege against self-incrimination allows an individual to answer any question due to the implications of some questions especially in the setting in which they are being asked (Blitz 67). As a result, it leads the claimant to possess a cause which is reasonable in apprehending direct answers through a belief that the explanations or answers which are given on a particular question is not dangerous and can be accepted in all judicial applications. This paper aims at discussing the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and significant Supreme Court cases regarding the amendment.

Major Supreme Court Cases on the 5th Amendment Privilege Against Self-Incrimination

The Supreme Court traces the origin of the Fifth Amendment on the right against self-incrimination to protect the English parliament and courts which are granted with religious doctrines with the leaders compelled to take oaths when invited to before the courts. The courts, however, choose the application of the oaths as an ex officio domain that forces the heretics of the England churches to swear in truthful answers before God as well as before other heretics. The use of oaths has been seen as a way of jeopardizing the underlying rules that govern the rights of people as stipulated in the Court laws and orders.

Facts About Miranda v. Arizona Case

The decision of the Supreme Court in Miranda V. Arizona was to address four cases concerning the custodial interrogations. Notably, according to Kamisar, in each case, the defendant was subjected to extensive investigation by the police, prosecuting attorney and the detectives in a confined room which barred him from the outside world to fathom the root cause of the case (Kamisar 43). None of the claims allowed the defendant to access an adequate and full warning of his rights during the interrogation process. The facts also subjected the defendant to an oral admission of questioning although signed statements were applied too.

Other Supreme Court Cases

California v. Stewart

In the California v. Stewart case, the course of investigating the series of purse-snatch robberies where one of the victims died of several injuries due to her assailant; it was identified that Stewart, the endorser of checks which were stolen in one of the robbery issues. As a result, Steward was arrested while in his home. Police also arrested his wife as well as the other three people who were in their house. Stewart was kept in a cell for over five days and subjected to mild interrogations on nine different occasions (Blitz 67). Notably, on the ninth interrogation session, he stated that he participated in robbing the deceased, although he had no intention of hurting her. The other four who were also arrested were then released due to lack of adequate evidence to put them behind bars. They had no connection with the crime.

Consequently, at trial, the statements made by Stewart were introduced and he was convicted of first-degree murder and robber with violence and sentenced to death (Swartz 319. However, The California Supreme Court reversed the case and held that Stewart should be advised of the importance of the right to counsel as well as the right to remain silent in all odds regarding such matters.

Chambers v. Florida

The circumstances that surrounded the Chambers case were not unusual and sad about the mid-twentieth-century South standards where a group of black defendants under duress was given a "voluntary" confession to make regarding the case before being subjected into a death sentence. The representation of the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion, in this case, portrays the action of the early civil rights era which was established to provide a fundamental process of protections for the black defendants who had been previously unwilling to recognize the facts about the case.

The Chambers case subjected the petitioners to five days interrogations although they failed to confess as well as declaim any guilt on them. All the circumstances regarding their confinement and questioning were brought. This also included the formal charges such as subjecting the petitioners to frightful misgivings and terror. Others who were practical strangers from the community were arrested and confined into one room that remained to be their house.

The argument from the law enforcement methods was not impressive, and a review was necessary to uphold the stipulated law as revealed from the Fifth Amendment. From the Constitution, such lawless means are proscribed irrespective of their ends. As a result, this argument flouts all basic principles which allow people to stand on equality of justice before the bar in every American court (Swartz 319). Similarly, under the new constitutional amendment system, most courts hold against any privileged that the petitioners may enjoy before their cases are solved regardless of how weak, helpless or outnumbered the victims of prejudice can be exposed.

Moreover, in the due process of the Supreme Court law, preservation of the Constitution on every practice should be disclosed by the records on the petitioner's response before making being accused of his death. Similarly, no higher duty, solemn responsibility could deter the court from translating the living law and maintains all the Constitutional amendments as portrayed the individual's incrimination.

Consequently, the case gave more force to the self-incrimination on basic prohibition by applying it to a state level in a way that the incorporation of doctrine makes it relevant concerning the situations in which it was exposed to violation.

Ashcraft v. Tennessee

In the Ashcraft V. Tennessee case, Justice Black affirmed that mere torture of a suspect was not enough to ensure that the needed involuntary self-incrimination had not occurred. The use of indefinite imprisonment and solitary confinement to generate false confessions, such as the use of coerced confession, failed to pass the constitutional muster (Ralph 40). As a result, it is not natural that any court of justice can permit those prosecutors who are serving in the open public relays to subject the witness of a defendant under a continuous cross-examination of more hours with put allowing them to rest or have an adequate sleep in an attempt to retrieve a "voluntary" confession. Similarly, it is not prudent to consistently use the Constitution to process that subjects the petitioners to a voluntary disclosure especially where the prosecutors do similar things which contradict the healthy way of the public trials in an open courtroom.

Notably, according to Wicker, the United States Constitution stands as a wall against any individual conviction in the American court through the means of a coerced confession (Wicker 6). Similarly, there are now as seen before, certain foreign nations where the government is dedicated to a different policy method in dispensing their jurisdictions. For example, in the governments where the conviction of an individual with testimony can be obtained by police organizations through possession of an unrestrained power to seize a person who is suspected to have committed crimes against the state all rules apply maximally. The persons are held in secret custody, wringed from making confessions through mental or physical torture. However, with the Constitution as the basic law governing the American Republic, this kind of government was not accepted.

Consequently, the left law enforcement authorities were left with only one option of misleading all the suspects into self-incrimination, although the U.S. Supreme Court permitted more options for approximately 22 years.

Conclusion

In conclusion, whether the statements which are obtained from a person who is subjected to custodial police interrogation is admissible against him in the criminal trial or the procedures which are used to assure that the person is accorded, an exemplary privilege which is portrayed in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution should apply. Similarly, the individual should not be compelled to incriminate himself instead it is necessary for the Supreme Court to hold all the available outside of criminal court proceedings to protect the person in all settings concerning their infringement of freedom of action in any significant way as opposed to being compelled to incriminate themselves.

Work Cited

Blitz, Marc Jonathan. "The Fifth Amendment: Self-Incrimination and the Brain." Searching Minds by Scanning Brains. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017. 59-79.

Kamisar, Yale. "The Miranda Case Fifty Years Later." BUL Rev. 97 (2017): 1293.

Ralph, Thomas D. "The Privilege against Self-Incrimination and the Compelled Production of Passwords to Encrypted Digital Media." Criminal Justice 32.1 (2017): 40.

Swartz, Jeffrey. "The Florida Constitution: The Right against Self-Incrimination Is Alive and Well in Tallahassee." TM Cooley L. Rev. 33 (2016): 319.

Wicker, Stephen B. "Forced decryption and the Fifth Amendment: A technical perspective." Proceedings of the IEEE 106.1 (2018): 3-6.