Constitutional RightsThe most important right for criminal prosecution that is covered by the Constitutional Amendments we talked about in class: the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth – it's definitely the Fifth Amendment. Known for its infamous protection against self-incrimination in the form of the one-fifth exception, this amendment also provides protection against many other issues that might arise in a case. While the other amendments are also critical to ensuring the kind of justice we are accustomed to in the United States, the Fifth Amendment explicitly states the defendant's right to a fair trial. This provides us with the model of due process we see in our courtrooms today, which focuses its emphasis on the rights of the individual to be protected by the government and asserts that the state must prove a person's guilt only within the confines of a system that is designed to protect their freedoms covered by the Bill of Rights. In other words, without due process, the other rights provided to us by the Constitution would no longer be guaranteed to us as we would be using the crime control model, which focuses on the rights of society over those of the individual and states that the benefits of a lower crime rate outweigh the potential problems related to personal rights. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Likewise, although due process is the most important part of the Fifth Amendment, it also provides many other important benefits, such as the right to remain silent and the right not to be tried twice for the same crime. This last right is particularly important because it protects the right of the accused to be able to continue living their life after being found innocent of a crime. Without this provision, they could be rounded up by the prosecutor every few years to retry the case when that would not be fair. The prosecution must accept the results of the trial – unless it is a hung jury, of course – and cannot continue to try to find the “perfect jury” that will find the defendant guilty. The criminal justice system, for the most part, does a good job of protecting these defendant rights since due process, for example, is so deeply ingrained in our criminal justice system that one of the three major components basically serves as a synonym : maintenance of justice. This would be impossible without due process and because this is so important to the system, it is protected very effectively. The right not to suffer double jeopardy is also well protected, except in a few noteworthy cases. The first is that a case can be retried if there is a hung jury. This seems unfair to the defendant since if a person does not believe they are guilty, it seems they would fall into the “shadow of a doubt” category. If a person does not believe that the prosecution does not have a sufficiently strong case, then it seems likely that they will not, but in this case nothing was put in place to protect the accused. It appears that the criminal justice system could be reworked so that something other than a mistrial would occur in this case, although I'm sure that would only raise more problems than it would solve. Likewise, a person can be tried for a different conviction based on the same act which seems to draw a fine line but seems to be an appropriate exception to the amendment, so I have no problem with this per se, it just seems noteworthy. The..