The Fifth Amendment: A Comprehensive Approach

The Fifth Amendment is typically equated in both popular and legal discourse with the privilege against self-incrimination. This concept, Garcia reminds us, represents an incomplete view of the amendment. Often forgotten are the other two criminal clauses embodied in the text of the amendment: the right to a grand jury indictment for a serious crime and the freedom from double jeopardy for the same offense.

Garcia emphasizes the relationship among these criminal protections. Historical developments suggest that these seemingly disparate provisions have common threads: to provide constitutional protection for all trial-related rights. Underlying these constitutional provisions is the need to check the potential abuse of governmental power over the individual. Indeed, this theme permeated the historical backdrop to the Fifth Amendment. Finally, Garcia examples the practical ties of these clauses. The right to a grand jury indictment, the privilege against self-incrimination and the protection against double-jeopardy represent points in the continuum of the criminal justice process. An important resource for scholars and students involved with Amerian constitutional law, criminal justice, and criminology.

ALFREDO GARCIA is Professor of Law, St. Thomas University, School of Law. In addition to teaching criminal law and procedure, he has served as an Assistant State Attorney in Florida and as a criminal defense attorney at both the state and federal levels. He is the author of The Sixth Amendment in Modern American Jurisprudence (Greenwood, 1992) and has published numerous articles in the field of constitutional criminal procedure.