The Rights of the Accused

Fully half of the Bill of Rights the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments deal with the rights of persons accused of, charged with, or convicted of crimes. The Framers believed that these rights were important because they knew that a common tactic of tyrannical governments was to oppress opponents of the government by charging them with crimes, searching their homes and possessions, seizing their property, imprisoning them, imposing harsh fines, torturing them, ruining their reputations, or perhaps even executing them. They had witnessed many of these tactics during the course of their growing disagreement with Great Britain.

Throughout most of our constitutional history, however, only a small portion of Supreme Court cases concerned the rights of the accused. Since the 1960s, when the U.S. Supreme Court began to interpret these amendments broadly in order to protect the rights of citizens who were under arrest, on trial, or imprisoned, these rights have generated a lot of controversy. Most famously, the Court's ruling in the case of Miranda v. Arizona (1966) declared that police officers must inform suspects arrested for committing crimes of their rights, and could not trick or coerce suspects into making confessions without first informing them that they had the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney present during questioning