Text 25: protecting the rights of the accused

Dealing with crime and criminals poses a serious challenge to democratic political systems. On the one hand, society must protect itself against criminals. At the same time, individual rights must be preserved. Justice in a democracy means protecting the innocent from government police power as well as punishing the guilty.

To deal with this challenge, the Founders of the US Constitution provided for a system of justice designed to guard the rights of the accused as well as the rights of society. Laws were to be strictly interpreted, trial procedures fair and impartial, and punishments reasonable. Later, the Fourteenth Amendment further protected the rights of the accused.

The police need evidence to accuse people of committing crimes, but getting evidence often requires searching people or their homes, cars, or offices. To protect the innocent, the Fourth Amendment guarantees the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, and papers, against unreasonable searches and seizures. What constitutes unreasonable searches and seizures? No precise definition has been made, so the courts have dealt with Fourth Amendment issues on a case-by-case basis.

Today the police must state under oath that they have probable cause to suspect someone of committing a crime. Then they must obtain a warrant from a court official before searching for evidence or making an arrest. The warrant must describe the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized.

Before 1980, 23 states had search laws that permitted police to enter a home without a warrant if they had probable cause to believe that the occupant had committed a felony, or major crime, but in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that, except in a life-threatening emergency, the Fourth Amendment forbids searching a home without a warrant.

Text 26: cruel and unusual punishment

The Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution forbids "cruel and unusual punishment," the only constitutional provision specifically limiting penalties in criminal cases. The US Supreme Court has rarely used this provision. For example, in 1981 the Court ruled that putting two prisoners in a cell built for one is not cruel and unusual punishment.

There is a great controversy, however, over the death penalty. During the 1970s the Supreme Court handed down several decisions on the constitutionality of the death penalty. In 1972, the Court ruled that capital punishment as then administered was not constitutional. The Court found the death penalty was being imposed in apparently arbitrary ways for a wide variety of crimes and mainly on African Americans and poor people. This decision warned the states that the death penalty needed clarification. Thirty-five states responded with new death penalty laws. These laws took two approaches. North Carolina and some other states made the death penalty mandatory for certain crimes. In this way, they hoped to eliminate arbitrary decisions. It is argued, however, that such laws failed to take into consideration the specifics of a crime and any possible mitigating circumstances.

Georgia and several other states took a different approach. They established new procedures for trials and appeals designed to reduce arbitrary decisions and racial prejudice in imposing the death penalty. In one case the Court ruled that under adequate guidelines the death penalty does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The Court stated, "Capital punishment is an expression of society's outrage. It is an extreme sanction, suitable to the most extreme of crimes."