How has the Constitution been able to remain a durable and viable instrument of government despite the enormous changes that have occurred in our society since its adoption? Discuss the issue in terms of specific changes. The Constitution speaks predominantly in terms of the protection of individual rights from governmental abuse or abridgment. What corresponding obligations and burdens must each citizen undertake or bear to ensure that everyone remains free to exercise these rights to their full extent?
The criminal law, both procedural and substantive, is limited by the Bill of Rights in terms of protection of US population in the set of the categories -such as religion, suppression of press, free speech, assembly. Additional attrition should be paid to the set of other corresponding issues - such as seizures without a well-grounded reason, self-incrimination and double jeopardy, protection from the unusual types of punishments, fines and excessive bail are guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment (Carlan et al, 2011).
At the same time, regardless the way, the constitution is composed, actual meaning of the rights, guaranteed for US population, is maximized only in the case when they are supported by the corresponding actions of the governmental structures. In fact, such support has evolved historically and as a result, it is possible to trace the respectful attitude to the right and freedoms of each particular individual alongside with the common docility to the rule of law among the US citizens (Ferdico, et al, 2015).
What is a grand jury and what are its functions? Compare and contrast the similarities and the differences between preliminary hearings and grand jury proceedings.
What is a motion to suppress evidence? Why is it particularly important to constitutional criminal procedure and, therefore, criminal justice professionals - especially law enforcement officers?
As soon as the plea of not guilty is entered by the defendant, conducting the preliminary hearing takes its place. In such case, the major requirement in relation to the prosecutor is represented in provision of the large pool of evident facts, which may be furthermore used for charging the defendant (US department of Justice, 2015)
In the case of issuing the grand jury, the defendant faces with the formal plea, which leads to arraignment. If the process of charging a defendant is based on another than grand jury approach, there is a need of entering the set of corresponding charges, implied by the formal plea, into arraignment.
There are the cases when there is a need for additional discovery and pretrial motions after the arraignment/ particular attention in such instances is paid to the motion for suppressing the evidence (Marsh, 1992). In accordance with statistical; data, such approach is used in less than 10% of the felony cases (Ferdico, et al, 2015).
References
Carlan, P., Nored, L. S., Downey, R.A. (2011) An Introduction to Criminal Law. Jones & Bartlett Publishers
Ferdico, J. N., Fradella, H. F., Totten, C. D. (2015) Criminal Procedure for the Criminal Justice Professional. Cengage Learning
Marsh, E. P. (1992) Does Evidence Law Matter in Criminal Suppression Hearings. Retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1725&context=llr
US department of Justice (2015) Preliminary Hearing. Retrieved from: https://www.justice.gov/usao/justice-101/preliminary-hearing
