The witness stand as a crucible: Public justice, private dignity, and the conflict over trauma testimony

“ It is part of the established tradition in the use of juries as instruments of public justice that the jury be a body truly representative of the community. For racial discrimination to result in the exclusion from jury service of otherwise qualified groups not only violates our Constitution and the laws enacted under it [4] but is at war with our basic concepts of a democratic society and a representative government. We must consider this record in the light of these important principles. ”

“ Moreover, important constitutional guarantees come into play once the citizen-whether soldier or civilian-is charged with a capital crime such as murder or rape. The most significant of these is the right to trial by jury, one of the most important safeguards against tyranny which our law has designed. [6] We must assume that the Congress, as well as the courts, was alive to the importance of those constitutional guarantees when it gave Article 92 its particular phrasing. ”

“ In resolving the inevitably sensitive questions of fact and law, we must continue to rely on the jury system, accompanied by the safeguards that judges, rules of evidence, presumption of innocence, and other protective features provide, as we do with rape, murder, and a host of other offenses against society and its individual members. ”

“ Respecting the fact that press freedom and privacy rights are both "plainly rooted in the traditions and significant concerns of our society," we instead focused on the less sweeping issue "whether the State may impose sanctions on the accurate publication of the name of a rape victim obtained from public records-more specifically, from judicial records which are maintained in connection with a public prosecution and which themselves are open to public inspection." ”

“ It is not for injury to the individual's character that redress or prevention is sought, but for injury to the right of privacy. For the former, the law of slander and libel provides perhaps a sufficient safeguard. The latter implies the right not merely to prevent inaccurate portrayal of private life, but to prevent its being depicted at all. [18] The absence of "malice" in the publisher does not afford a defence.
Personal ill-will is not an ingredient of the offence, any more than in an ordinary case of trespass to person or to property. ”

“ The personal effects ad possessions of the individual (all contraband and the like excepted) are sacrosanct from prying eyes, from the long arm of the law, from any rummaging by police. Privacy involves the choice of the individual to disclose or to reveal what he believes, what he thinks, what he possesses. ”

“ They are at liberty indeed, are under a solemn duty-to look at the substance of things whenee r they enter upon the inquiry whether the legislature has transcended the limits of its authority. If, therefore, a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is a palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law, it is the duty of the courts to so adjudge, and thereby give effect to the constitution.' Mugler v. ”

“ Sec 7 No person shall be held to answer for a criminal offense unless on the presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases of impeachment or in cases cognizable by Justice of the Peace, or arising in the Army or Navy, or in the Militia when in actual service in time of war or public danger, and no person for the same offense shall be put twice in jeopardy of punishment, nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. ”

“ Lord Chief Justice Tindal, speaking for himself and the other judges, said, in response to the questions propounded, that the jurors ought to be told in all cases where insanity is set up as a defense that 'every man in presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction ”

“ No man should be deprived of his life under the forms of law unless the jurors who try him are able, upon their consciences, to say that the evidence before them, by whomsoever adduced, is sufficient to show beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of every fact necessary to constitute the crime charged. ”

“ Our cases recognize that, under certain circumstances, exposure to particularly inflammatory publicity creates so strong a presumption of prejudice that "the jurors' claims that they can be impartial should not be believed." ”

“ For some, the fact that we cold-bloodedly kill our own kind, taints the whole of our society and makes us all accomplices to the premeditated and solemn extinction of human life. For others, on the contrary, the disgrace is that we place a higher value on the life and dignity of the killer than on that of the victim. A third group prefer a purely pragmatic approach which emphasises not the moral issues, but the inordinate stress that capital punishment puts on the judicial process and, ultimately, on the Presidency, as well as the morbid passions it arouses in the public ”

“ The idea of a "privacy" right and a place of public accommodation are, in this context, mutually exclusive. Conduct or depictions of conduct that the state police power can prohibit on a public street do not become automatically protected by the Constitution merely because the conduct is moved to a bar or a "live" theater stage, any more than a "live" performance of a man and woman locked in a sexual embrace at high noon in Times Square is protected by the Constitution because they simultaneously engage in a valid political dialogue. ”

“ It is asserted, however, that standards for evaluating state commercial regulations are inapposite in the present context, as state regulation of access by consenting adults to obscene material violates the constitutionally protected right to privacy enjoyed by petitioners' customers. Even assuming that petitioners have vicarious standing to assert potential customers' rights, it is unavailing to compare a theater open to the public for a fee, with the private home of Stanley v. ”

“ If Congress by the easy device of requiring a man to keep the private papers that he has customarily kept can render such papers 'public' and nonprivileged, there is little left to either the right of privacy or the constitutional privilege. ”

“ Access to official records, and to documents and papers pertaining to official acts, transactions, or decisions, as well as to government research data used as basis for policy development, shall be afforded the citizen, subject to such limitations as may be provided by law. Section 8. The right of the people, including those employed in the public and private sectors, to form unions, associations, or societies for purposes not contrary to law shall not be abridged. Section 9. Private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. ”

“ The enforcement of these limitations by judicial process is the device of self-governing communities to protect the rights of individuals and minorities, as well against the power of numbers, as against the violence of public agents transcending the limits of lawful authority, even when acting in the name and wielding the force of the government." [68] Thus were the States put on notice that every species of State legislation, whether dealing with procedural or substantive rights, was subject to the scrutiny of the Court when the question of its essential justice is raised. ”

“ The State should not make itself guilty of conduct which violates that which it is in the community's interests to nurture. The Constitution, in deference to our humanity and sense of dignity, does not allow us to kill in cold blood in order to deter others from killing. Nor does it allow us to kill criminals simply to get even with them." [11] We are not to stoop to the level of the criminal.
[234] ⁠It follows from the remarks above that as a punishment the death penalty is a violation of the right to life. It is cruel, inhuman and degrading. It is also a severe affront to human dignity. ”

“ Whoever, by virtue of public position under a State government, deprives another of property, life, or liberty without due process of law, or denies or takes away the equal protection of the laws, violates the constitutional inhibition ”