Factors That Initiated the Treason Trial Acts of 1696
Author
Author Affiliation Factors that Initiated the Treason Trial Acts of 1696
The Treason Trial Acts regulated the law of treason. It is during the seventeenth century that the law of “treason played a significant,” Rezneck (1930) part in English history. Before this act, criminals residing in Britain were deprived of counsel, critically constrained in their ability to have defense witnesses summoned, sworn, and heard, and even prohibited from attaining a copy of the indictment stipulating the charges against them preceding the trial. The Prosecution was therefore able to convict perpetrators on fabricated charges of treason. Unfortunately, judges at that period of time were under…show more content… The act specified that individuals indicted of treason should have the right to be represented by a maximum of two counselors, that witnesses could be compelled and made to give evidence under oath, and one could only be found guilty of treason by the substantiation of two witnesses of identical felony. The defendant had to be tried prior to the running of the statute of limitations and was permitted to own a copy of his own indictment subsequent to the trial.
The reforms initiated by the Treason Trial Act influenced not only the law of treason, but ultimately all criminal defendants. These defendants in the long run, enjoyed the basic rights that were delivered in the Treason Trial acts. The final subsidiary creation of the Revolution stands “virtually at the fountain-head of the contemporary movement for the regularization and humanization of legal practice.” Langbein (1994). This paper will discover the proceedings that steered the legal transformation, the struggle to establish the reform, and the Act’s definitive bearing on modern criminal practice.
Need For legal…show more content… The key principle of the “Accused Speaks” trial was that the accused should be banned from having counsel assistance in his defense. Regrettably, in several of the great political causes of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the conduct of the bench barely demonstrated reliability to the welfares of the defendant. An example is the infamous criminal proceedings brought against Titus Oates, the judges constantly “intimidated and despised the prisoner with an intemperance which, even in the most brutal cases, ill becomes the judicial appeal.”