Due Process essays

Due Process essays "A right to a fair trial". That statement seems so true at first glance, but when you analyze it, you will find the statement to be quite false at times. People are still treated unjustly and feeling uncomfortable with the criminal justice system. The United States Constitution declares us the "right to a fair trial", yet through the years, some U. S. citizens have not recovered that particular right. Because of mistakes like this, people lose faith in this Constitution. In the Constitution, a right to a free trial can be sum up in one method, "Due Process of Law". The 5th Amendment has the first reference of the term "Due Process of Law". At that time the United States was existing during the colonial ages. The country had just won the Revolutionary War and it was to become a new nation of freedom, truth and justice. When our founding fathers came together to build our nation and constitution, they regretted to include all of the people who were living in the U. S. These people that I speak about are slaves. They were not even considered to be citizens nor an integral part of the U. S. This idea started with the Dred Scott Case, which states that slaves were not U. S. citizens, therefore they were not allowed to have a fair trial. When the slaves became "free", for the next ten years they had all of the rights that were promised to them. Unfortunately, everything usually comes to an end. In 1875, a new President was in office and the Jim Crow laws spread all over the land. When this law began to spread, all of the rights of free slaves began to disappear and cast its ugly shadow over the country. You might think that I am being too dramatic, yet history has shown the extreme loss of rights of some Americans. Minority citizens, mainly African Americans, went through these hardships and tribulations. All of this was mainly due to the fact that "Due Process of Law" did not exist with the Jim Crow Laws. Af...