Due Process and Trial Competence
Supreme Court Addresses the Question of a Defendant's Sanity
The Court in recent years has held that practically all of the criminal procedural guarantees of the Bill of Rights — the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments — are fundamental to State criminal justice systems and that the absence of one or the other particular guarantees denies a suspect or a defendant due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. Further, the Court has held that the Due Process Clause protects against practices and policies which violate precepts of fundamental fairness, even if they do not violate specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights. The standard query in such…
