do you agree with the self-incrimination clause?

Question

explain why or why not

Answer 1

The 5th Amendment was added to the Bill of Rights in order to prevent the Government from forcing confessions out of innocent people, or making them give evidence against themselves and excusing the government from proving each and every element of its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

This goes back to the Declaration of Independence and the abuses the American Colonists suffered at the hands of the British governors and their legislatures prior to our cecession from England.

In the bad old days they could force you to give evidence against yourself so that the prosecution could be lazy and not have to prove anything.

Well you know what that means: RACK AND SCREW!

By torturing people, they could force a confession which would then be used against any person the authorities wanted to convict and make an example of, even if they were innocent. Why not? It saves time and effort, right?

Who needs a jury trial if we can just get the guy to testify against himself and then put him away. We don't need to regard procedure, just lock the dude up. Huh?

So the 5th Amendment was put in place to prevent that.

Since the Bill of Rights, all of the original colonies passed similar constitutional protections and made that, essentially, a common law right or privilege against self-incrimination.

With the passage of the 14th Amendment, the US Supreme Court determined later, that the 5th Amendment was incorporated into the 14th Amendment so that even in the absence of state constitutional privileges, the 5th Amendment is a universally protected constitutional privilege throughout the United States.

So when you go out on the street and a cop pulls you over.. "You have the right to remain silent." I suggest you REMAIN SILENT!

Answer 2

I have never quite got the drift of the 5th amendment.
If you have nothing to hide, why not just answer the questions. If you are guilty or are trying to hide some complicit information - well, isn't that what our legal system is set up for - getting to the truth and dispensing justice? It makes far more sense to me to get answers from a suspect rather than making it a competition of whether the prosecutor or the defense attorney is better at influencing a jury.

Answer 3

Yes.