Constitutional Rights and the Criminal Justice System

Constitutional Rights and the Criminal Justice System
Student's Name
Institutional Affiliation
Constitutional Rights and the Criminal Justice System
American constitutional rights remain fundamental to the activities of the criminal justice system. The constitution operates to allow rights and liberties to every US citizen. The fundamentals of the Bill of Rights have always encompassed the provision of civil rights and liberties to prospects, including freedom of assembly, religion, right to property, and press. The US has also made every attempt to ensure that the criminal justice system works within the confines of the law. Still, law enforcement officers have been accused of violating the same rights they are supposed to protect. Incidences of violation of individual rights as stipulated in the constitution have consistently attracted debates on what steps should be taken to uphold individual civil rights and liberties. In this analysis, emphasis is anchored on the provisions of the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments and their applications in the criminal justice system relative to two of the most monumental cases: Byrd v. the United States and Chavez v. Martinez. Understanding the constitutional rights and the limitations of such rights should help in eliminating some of the challenges that citizens face in the course of the law, as demonstrated in Byrd v. the United States and Chavez v. Martinez.
Chavez v. Martinez Case Brief
The Chavez v. Martinez remains a renowned case in the criminal justice system bearing the constitutional and the rule of law concerns that it raised. The briefing of Chavez v. Martinez is as follows.
Issue Presented
Oliverio Martinez (plaintiff) was shot in a struggle with police officers and later interrogated without the Miranda rights warning thereby raising the legality of the police actions. The issue in question in the Chavez v. Martinez was whether the right to be free from coercive questioning is violated when a person's statements are used in a different matter, other than a criminal case, pursuant to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Facts of the Case
Martinez was stopped by police officers who were investigating narcotics violations while riding his bicycle home from work. As the officers attempted to handcuff Martinez, a struggle ensued, leading to him being shot. The wound from the gunshot led to him losing his vision and rendered him permanently paralyzed (Waiton, 2019). Martinez later sued the police officers because both the search and the use of excessive force were unconstitutional. During the trial, the defendants introduced a taped confession from the plaintiff. The confession had been taken while Martinez was in the hospital seeking treatment from the gunshot wound. In the tape, Martinez confessed to having grabbed one of the officers' guns amidst the scuffle. Martinez claimed that the tape could not be admissible because he had not been Mirandized at the time of the confession. Both the trial and appellate courts agreed.
Summary and the Conclusion
The United States Supreme Court reversed the judgment holding that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity. The court determined that Martinez's Fifth Amendment rights had not been violated in a div...