TRIGGER WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, MURDER, AND VERBAL ASSAULT
The Sixth Amendment allows for all accused people in criminal prosecutions the right to a speedy and public trial. The jury is required to be impartial to the State and district where the crime was committed. The district shall know the nature, the cause of the trial and will obtain and supply witnesses in favor of all parties in court.
For all court hearings, they usually follow the same procedures. The pre-trial consists of the initial appearance, the preliminary hearing, indictment, arraignment, evidence and witnesses, and the plea bargain. After this, the criminal trial begins, consisting of the jury selection, opening statements, presentation of the evidence, closing arguments, and of course, the verdict.
Towards the end of the trial, the court begins the presentence investigation, victim impact statement, sentencing laws, and deferred judgment. Following that, there are three different ways courts often punish the defendant in order to charge the defendant: incarceration, parole, and probation.
Criminal law is divided into two different segments: misdemeanors and felonies. They are both divided into smaller segments as well to better differentiate between the severity of the crimes.
Some examples of felonies may include: drunk driving, kidnapping, murder, aggravated assault, or rape. Misdemeanors could include: indecent exposure, petty theft, vandalism, resisting arrest, and perjury.
Misdemeanors are separated into three different sections: simple, serious, and aggravated. Felonies, the much more serious side of the crime spectrum, are divided into four different elements: class A, B, C, and D. Class A felonies are the most serious of crimes committed, with class D felonies being less serious than that of the other three classes.
However, it is important to recognize that each state has different ways of running their court trials. While they may follow the same guidelines, how the states follow these guidelines may vary from court to court.
In some states, depending on the severity of the crime committed, the Federal Magistrate judges that are used in federal cases can hear the initial matter in the pre-trial, but do not decide cases. States and other federal governments create or repeal certain laws that aren’t required to be kept the same around the United States. These different jurisdictions are the ones who are in charge of punishing those who break these laws.
For federal felony cases, the use of grand juries are not required for all states unless the defendant waives the grand jury indictment. The grand jury indictment “contains the basic information that informs the person of the charges against them”.
In recent years, this basic right has been violated on more than one occasion. In fact, more people are realizing that these trial postponements are a larger problem than what was recognized before. These cases are called trial continuance.
There can be many reasons for a trial continuance. One could blame COVID-19 for the slow down of lawyers that are available to work. Others could see that lawyers are requesting more time in order to dig through the case more thoroughly or are trying to push the trial date back in order to provide the best-case scenario for their client. The government can push back the trials to receive the upper hand in more finicky cases that take longer to process and find evidence for. Even the defendant and the prosecutor can ask for more time if their lawyer had suddenly dropped the case.
However, if the case has too many push-backs, it violates the Sixth Amendment. As it is written, a person in criminal trials has the right to a speedy and public trial. In recent years, this “speedy trial” has turned into a multiple year long wait. And in most recent cases of continuance, the people involved in the trials are dying before they can return to court to complete the trials or watch justice be served.
In Anchorage Park, Alaska, a sexual assault had occurred in broad daylight on July 15, 2017. A witness dialed 911 with the police arriving on the scene rapidly. They found the assaulter with his pants off, still atop of one of the two victims. The police collected and found DNA evidence proving the man guilty.
The trial was set for October 9, 2017. The trial date was pushed back 50 times by allowance of the court due to the man’s lawyers requesting it. Before the trial could even occur, both of the victims of the sexual assault had died, leaving the single witness alone on the stand against the defendant.
Although this is a sad case with tragic and strange incidents, there are cases similar to this that faced similar continuance claims. In a more recent case regarding the Former Ringling college football coach sexually and verbally abusing his players, his trial had been pushed back for the second time to September 16, 2025.
In May, 2022, the uncle of two young children was accused of sexual assault and grooming. The father of the children, who also acted as their prosecutor, had found evidence and brought it to court. However, the trial has continued to be postponed into 2026, four years after the first trial occurred. The father, frustrated, claims that “we were having to put our lives on hold”.
Raymond Martinez and Juanita Moser were a couple that got caught during a large drug bust in California in 2015. They were trying to ship drugs to Guam but got caught during the large investigation. Their trial date was set for February 6, 2018. They had requested for the trial to be postponed because their lawyer had claimed that the operation that caught them had some major flaws, incarcerating the couple.
Continuing to push back these trial dates oftentimes brings more harm to the hand of justice than most would consider when learning about these different court hearings. In more recent years, trials that are continuing to be pushed back are harming the plaintiff more than the defendant.
In the end, the Sixth Amendment is an important but largely abused basic right that may lead to people being affected negatively. Lives are changing, and these trial continuances prevent justice and peace of mind to a family that may need it the most. While they may be effective at keeping the defendant from having the maximum amount of time served, it is important to recognize that time kills, and may change the course of someone’s life forever.
