Week 4 – Assignment
The Secret Trial
[WLOs: 2, 3] [CLOs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Prior to beginning your written assignment read the Criminal Procedure (Links to an external site.) article, Right to a Speedy and Public Trial – Public Trial (Links to an external site.) article, the Right to Confront Witness (Links to an external site.) article, Right to Counsel (Links to an external site.) article and review the Supreme Court Opinions synopses.
Read the following case scenario:
In the ongoing war on terrorism, the new president has proposed expanding the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). FISA is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law. The new presidents proposed Secret Terrorism Trial Bill will expand the jurisdiction of the FISA to hold secret, non-public trials of accused terrorists for any planned or actual acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. The bill will also allow witnesses to testify before the FISA Court by remote video with their identities kept secret from the accused and any defense team. The stated purpose for the secrecy is to allow trials of terrorists without giving them a public platform for their radical ideology and to allow witnesses to testify without fear of reprisals from terrorist groups such as ISIS or Al-Qaeda.
Write a paper addressing the following:
Explain whether the proposed Secret Terrorism Trial Bill violates the Sixth Amendment right to a public trial,
Describe whether the proposed Secret Terrorism Trial Bill violate the Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against you.
Explain whether the governments overriding need to fight terrorism outweighs the Sixth Amendment rights of the accused.
Identify whether the Sixth Amendment applies to terrorists since the writers of the Constitution could not have envisioned mass shootings and suicide bombers.
The Secret Trial paper
Must be 500 to 750 words in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Centers APA Style (Links to an external site.)
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of paper
Students name
Course name and number
Instructors name
Date submitted
For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).
Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Ashford Writing Center resources.
Must use at least three court cases and one scholarly source.
The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
To assist you in completing the research required for this assignment, view this Ashford University Library Quick n Dirty (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the Ashford University Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Centers Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.)
Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.
