EXAM 4

INSTRUCTIONS:
You are to find a recent US Supreme Court case having to do with some right from the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, or 14th Amendment and the criminal defendant.
One way to start finding a case is to Google US Supreme Court cases on Criminal Procedure.
This will likely bring you to Wikipedia. which is fine, because what you will see is a list case cases divided into categories. Within each category will be a a number of cases listed from oldest to newest,
Pick a case that has been decided within the last 25 years (from 1995 to the present).
When you click on the case you want to look at, it will bring you to the case.
You can read the Wikipedia summary. But then you should also do to a legal website for case briefs or case summaries such as Oyez.org or Findlaw as your definitive source and citation.
You will find references to these cites and External Links to these cites at the end of the Wikipedia source for each case.
You will then summarize the case as follows:
1. State the name of the case (E.g. Miranda v. Arizona is the case name)
2. State the year it was decided (E.g. Brown v. Board of Education (1954))
3. Facts of the Case: Summarize the facts of the case: You can find case summaries by Googling case briefs or case summaries for a particular case.
For example, you would enter in Google: Miranda v. Arizona case brief or Miranda v. Arizona case summary.
The statement of the facts should be about a 200 word paragraph.
You may quote from your source.
4. Then you will state the question that the Supreme Court addressed in the case.
This will be found in the case summary. You may want to go to a couple of sources to find a good statement of the issue or question in the case. This is usually just a single sentence.
5. You will then put the Court’s answer – this can usually be stated a s a “Yes” of “No” to the question.
6. Court’s Reasoning/Holding – Next you will summarize the Court’s reasoning for their answer. This is also referred to as the Court’s “Holding” in the case.
This will be another 1 or 2 paragraphs.
7. Case Significance – Finally, you will need to make a statement about the importance of the case – why the decision is important: how it affects the rights of the defendant – or how it might affect what police do.
A final 1 or 2 paragraphs.
An example would be the Miranda v. Arizona case:
You could say the following: That as the result of the Miranda decision, due process now requires that the police to protect the suspect’s 5th Amendment right to remain silent by making sure that the suspect is clearly informed of this right prior to interrogation. By requiring this, the Supreme Court has put the responsibility procedurally on law enforcement and the prosecution to ensure that any confession is made voluntarily. Because of this requirement, police interrogation procedures had to change to include a reading of the rights to the suspect – now known as the Miranda Warnings.
You may want to do a little research on case significance, or you can do your own analysis – or a combination.
When you are using words or sentences from a case website – please remember to quote.
Remember to put your citations at the end of your submission.