Dedicated to the Resurrection and Reaffirmation of the Sixth Amendment in the JURY TRIAL SYSTEM which reads in part:

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense."

RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL CLAUSE: All the facts (e.g., sentencing factors; aggravating factors; elements of the offense) of the crime charged are to be determined by a jury, not by a judge.

CONFRONTATION CLAUSE: A defendant is guaranteed the right to directly confront and cross-examine an accusing witness.

COMPULSORY PROCESS CLAUSE: A defendant has the right to have witnesses testify on his behalf in a criminal or civil trial.

ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL CLAUSE: A defendant in a criminal or civil matter has the right to counsel of his choice and if he cannot afford counsel in a criminal case, the court will appoint counsel to represent him. Otherwise known as the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) 18 U.S.C. § 3006A.

The Right to Jury Trial; Confrontation; Compulsory Process; Assistance of Counsel Clauses are all written in the Constitutional Guarantee of the Sixth Amendment.

The Founding Fathers (Washington, Hamilton, Madison, etc.) thought one of the most important provisions of the Constitution to be the Jury Trial Guarantee. The Jury Trial Guarantee is written into the body of the Constitution and, into the Bill of Rights.

The Founding Fathers included it in Article III, §2, cl. 3 ("The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury,") and the Sixth Amendment ("In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury…") and the Seventh Amendment ("In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved,…").

The Founding Fathers thought it prudent to include the right to petition the courts in the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law …., prohibiting …, the right of the people …, to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.") The right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances is the cornerstone of all prisoners' right of access to the courts.

The Due Process and Right to Jury Trial clauses require the standard of persuasion upon which the prosecution as the trier of facts must prove all the elements of the offense to the jury, to be the proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard.

These rights are codified (The process of compiling, arranging, and systematizing the laws of a given jurisdiction into an ordered code) in statute pursuant to Titles 18 and 28 of the United States Code Annotated (U.S.C.). These rights are also codified in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (Fed. R. Crim. P.); Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Fed. R. Civ.P.); Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (Fed. R. App. P.); Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE).

These rights and the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard, are requirements
of law in a free society, and in the historic procedural content of due process.

The United State Supreme Court reaffirmed the beyond a reasonable doubt standard in the matter of Samuel Winship, (written as) In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970). Justice Brennan stated:

"The reasonable-doubt standard plays a vital role in the American scheme of criminal procedure. It is the prime instrument for reducing the risk of convictions resting on factual error. The standard provides concrete substance for the presumption of innocence-that bedrock 'axiomatic and elementary' principle whose 'enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.' … ' [A] person accused of a crime… would be at a severe disadvantage, a disadvantage amounting to a lack of fundamental fairness, if he could be adjudged guilty and imprisoned for years on the strength of the same evidence as would suffice in a civil case.' … The requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt has this vital role in our criminal procedure for cogent reasons. The accused during a criminal prosecution has at stake interests of immense importance, both because of the possibility that he may lose his liberty upon conviction and because of the certainty that he would be stigmatized by the conviction. Accordingly, a society that values the good name and freedom of every individual should not condemn a man for commission of a crime when there is reasonable doubt about his guilt. …'Where one party has at stake an interests of transcending value-as a criminal defendant his liberty-this margin of error is reduced as to him by the process of placing on the other party the burden of … persuading the factfinder at the conclusion of the trial of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."

Due process commands that no man shall lose his liberty unless the Government has borne the burden of … convincing the factfinder of his guilt. '…Lest there remain any doubt about the constitutional stature of the reasonable-doubt standard, we explicitly hold that the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which his is charged." Id. At 363-364.

Based on the beyond a reasonable doubt standard, if a defendant is convicted on a lesser standard of proof in a criminal trial, e.g., (for example) the preponderance of the evidence standard, he is entitled to appeal his conviction to the Court of Appeals pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. If the Court of Appeals denies him relief, he is entitled to appeal to the United States Supreme Court. If he is denied there he is entitled to correct his judgment of conviction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255, (Federal custody; remedies on motion attacking sentence). If he is a State prisoner, he is entitled to correct his judgment pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (State custody; remedies in Federal courts). 28 U.S.C. § 2241 (Writ of habeas corpus) is also available to him pursuant to the "inadequate or ineffective" language of § 2255 5.

The above show various statutes that a pre-1996 prisoner could use to correct his judgment of conviction based on constitutional violations that he challenged at trial, sentence, and on direct appeal. But, Congress modified these same statutes when Congress enacted the Antiterrorism Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996. The AEDPA was enacted in response to the Oklahoma City bombing and to limit the endless appeals of inmates on death row. By enacting the AEDPA, Congress has severely limited prisoners' ability to access the courts to address constitutional violations.

In spite of the fact that objections to the constitutional violations were made in a timely fashion, e.g., at trial, sentence, and on direct appeal. But, the violations were not ruled unconstitutional until after the prisoner's direct appeal and initial §2255 were exhausted. In that case, a prisoner must rely on "a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable." 28 U.S.C. § 2255 8.

By amending § 2255 and adding 8 into the language of the AEDPA, Congress has effectively denied prisoner's access to the courts in direct contravention with the United States Constitution, Art. I, §9, cl. 2.

It is important to note that In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970), was made retroactive on collateral review by the Supreme Court in 1972. See Reed v. Ross, 468 U.S. 1, 4-5 (1984).

The Supreme Court is fond of quoting Winship, and the beyond a reasonable doubt standard in its various holdings. As of this writing the Court has yet to hold that it applies retroactively to the erroneous and unconstitutional standards applied under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA), aka the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.