Opinion ID: 3010594
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Background of the Legal System

Text: in the Philippines Effective as of 1899, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States under a treaty that gave the Congress of the United States the authority to determine the civil rights and political status of the people of the Philippines. Cabebe v. Acheson, 183 F.2d 795, 798 (9th Cir. 1950). The Spanish system, in force in the Philippines, gave the right to the accused to be tried before judges, who acted in effect as a court of inquiry, and whose judgments were notfinal until passed in review before [a superior court] with a right of final review . . . in the supreme court at Madrid. Dorr, 195 U.S. at 145. In 1902, Congress created the Philippine Commission and authorized it to exercise the powers of government in the Philippines (the Act of 1902). Kepner v. United States, 195 U.S. 100, 116 (1904). That legislation established certain requirements for any law subsequently enacted by the Philippine Commission.5 In doing so, Congress transplanted many of the protections of the Bill of Rights to the Philippines. For example, one of the provisions of the Act of 1902 prevented the Philippine Commission from enacting any law which shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law . . . . Id. at 117. The Act of 1902 also provided for certain guarantees including several guarantees for persons accused of crime. These included a prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to counsel, the right to testify in one's own behalf, as well as the right _________________________________________________________________ 5. The Independence of the Philippines was later authorized under the Philippine Independence Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 456 that provided for the complete independence of the Philippine Islands within ten years from enactment of that legislation. 10 to refrain from doing so, and a prohibition against being twice put in jeopardy of punishment. Id. at 118. In Kepner, an attorney in the Philippines was charged with embezzlement, tried before a judge without a jury, and acquitted. However, the United States appealed to the Supreme Court of the Philippines which reversed, found Kepner guilty, and sentenced him to a term of imprisonment. Kepner appealed to the United States Supreme Court arguing that the appeal following his acquittal subjected him to double jeopardy in violation of the laws governing the Philippines as well as the United States Constitution. The government argued that the prohibition against double jeopardy in the Act of 1902, and the subsequent limitations that had been imposed by the Philippine Commission had to be interpreted in context with the system of law that prevailed before Spain ceded the islands to the United States. Under that law, no jeopardy attached in a criminal prosecution until there had been a final judgment in the court of last resort. Id. at 121. The lower courts were deemed mere examining courts, having preliminary jurisdiction, and the accused was not finally convicted or acquitted until the case had been passed upon in the audiencia, or supreme court, whose judgment was subject to review in the supreme court at Madrid . . . . The trial was regarded as one continuous proceeding. Id. The Court concluded that Congress intended to adopt a well-known part of the fundamental law of the United States, and to give much of the beneficent protection of the Bill of Rights to the people of the Philippine Islands . . . . Id. at 122. The Court noted that the President had instructed the Philippine Commission to engraft some . . of the essential principles of American constitutional jurisprudence . . . upon the law of [the Philippines]. Id. at 122. The President had charged: the Commission should bear in mind . . . that there are certain great principles of government which have been made the basis of our governmental system, which we deem essential to the rule of law and the maintenance of individual freedom, . . . that there are also certain practical rules of government which we have found to 11 be essential to the preservation of these great principles of liberty and law, and that these principles . . . must be established and maintained in their islands for the sake of their liberty and happiness, however much they may conflict with the customs of laws or procedure with which they may be familiar. .. . Upon every . . . branch of the government of the Philippines, therefore, must be imposed these inviolable rules: That no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. . . Id. at 123 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court then listed certain guarantees that it believed had to be included in the notion of due process regardless of the customs of the people in the Philippines. These included the right to speedy and public trial, the right to be informed of the nature of any accusation, and to confront one's accusers, and the right to counsel. The Court then held that the concept of double jeopardy guaranteed in the Philippines must be interpreted in view of the English common law and, under that system, jeopardy attached at the first trial. Thus, the accused could not be retried for the same offense following acquittal. The same day that the Court decided Kepner, it decided Dorr. There, the issue was whether, in the absence of a statute expressly conferring the right, trial by jury was a necessary incident of judicial procedure in the Philippines. Id. The Court stated the issue as follows: Must Congress, in establishing a system for trial of crimes and offenses committed in the Philippine Islands, carry to their people by proper affirmative legislation a system of trial by jury? Id. at 143. The Court reviewed the history of the Philippines and noted several features of the Spanish legal system that governed those islands before they were ceded to the United States. The Court reasoned that, even though the Constitution contained no express provision as to the nature of the rights, if any, that Congress must extend to territories that the United States seeks to govern under its treaty power, there may nevertheless be restrictions of so fundamental a nature that they cannot be transgressed, 12 although not expressed in so many words in the Constitution. Id. at 147. The Court concluded that there were such rights, but the right to a jury trial was not among them. If the right to trial by jury were a fundamental right which goes wherever the jurisdiction of the United States extends, or if Congress, in framing laws for outlying territory belonging to the United States, was obliged to establish that system by affirmative legislation, it would follow that, no matter what the needs or capacities of the people, trial by jury, and in no other way, must be forthwith established . . . Id. at 148. The Court held that the Constitution does not require [Congress] to enact for ceded territory . . . a system of laws which shall include the right of trial by jury, and that the Constitution does not, without legislation, and of its own force, carry such right to territory so situated. Id. at 149. We conclude that Congress did not intend a contrary result when it enacted 21 U.S.C. S 851. Rather, as the district court concluded, Congress intended only to ensure fundamental fairness by excluding any conviction that was obtained in a manner inconsistent with concepts of fundamental fairness and liberty endemic in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. As Justice Harlan noted in his dissent in Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 177 (1968), [t]he Bill of Rights is evidence, at various points, of the content Americans find in the term `liberty' and of American standards of fundamental fairness. Thus,  `Due Process' expresses the requirement of `fundamental fairness,'  Lassiter v. Department of Soc. Serv. of Durham County, North Carolina, 452 U.S. 18, 24 (1981) (inquiring into whether the Due Process Clause required appointed counsel for litigant in civil litigation). In Lassiter, the Court stated [a]pplying the Due Process Clause is therefore an uncertain enterprise which must discover what `fundamental fairness' consists of in a particular situation by first considering any relevant precedents and then by assessing the several interests that are at stake. Id. 13 In Duncan, the Supreme Court examined the right of a jury trial under the United States Constitution. The question has been asked whether a right is among those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions; whether it is basic in our system of jurisprudence; and whether it is a fundamental right, essential to a fair trial. Duncan, 391 U.S. at 148-9 (1968) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The Court held that the right to a jury trial for one accused of a serious crime is so fundamental to our system of liberty that it is incorporated into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore applicable to state prosecutions. In doing so, the Court briefly commented upon the historical importance of that right to the Founding Fathers and the pervasive extent to which the right had been incorporated into the constitutions of the various states. The Court noted [e]ven such skeletal history is impressive support for considering the right to jury trial in criminal cases to be fundamental to our system of justice, an importance frequently recognized in the opinions of this Court. Id. at 153. The Court reasoned that the jury trial functioned in tandem with an independent judiciary to protect against abuses by the state. The interposition of a jury of lay persons between the accuser, and the accused checked abuses of power. The guarantees of jury trial in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a profound judgment about the way in which law should be enforced and justice administered. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority. Id. at 155-6. Thus, the Court concluded that the concept of Due Process under the Fourteenth Amendment included the right to a jury trial for serious crimes. 14 Kole's argument is bottomed upon an assumption that Congress could not have intended to allow a conviction that was obtained in violation of such a fundamental right to enhance a subsequent sentence in a court of the United States. However, this position overlooks the purpose behind S 960 as well as the fact that jury trials, though fundamental to the system of justice established under the United States Constitution, are nevertheless relatively unique to that system. Few would be so narrow or provincial as to maintain that a fair and enlightened system of justice would be impossible without [trial by jury]. . . The question thus is whether given this kind of system a particular procedure is fundamental--whether, that is, a procedure is necessary to an Anglo-American regime of ordered liberty. Duncan, 391 U.S. at 149, n.14. Although the Court answered that question in the affirmative as applied to the American legal system, it left no doubt that other societies may well be able to fashion a system with no juries that is fundamentally fair to the accused, thus comporting with our concept of due process.