Supreme Court Case Of Aaron Burr

Aaron Burr was arrested in the early 1800’s on counts of treason and high misdemeanors. He was accused of conspiring to take over parts of Louisiana and Mexico. After his take over he planned to crown himself king of this new territory. The presiding trial judge on his case was John Marshall, Chief justice of the supreme court. Marshall wanted to make sure that the government could show that Burr had committed it a crime. They needed to and lacked proof of probable cause for trying Burr with said charges and inevitably “Marshall concluded that the prosecution failed to produce sufficient evidence of treason” (Linder, 2001). It was more hearsay than concrete evidence of treason. The main objective of the prosecution was to prove that an overt

From the very beginning of the development of America there has been a disagreement as to how power is distributed throughout the government and how much power the government can will over it’s people. Thomas Jefferson believed that judicial system should serve the people, while Marshall believed that governmental action should abide by the law. The case of Aaron Burr ultimately helped show why the separation of powers, within the three branches is of high importance. Without this separation, one area of government would be subject to becoming too powerful. In 2016, Cliven Bundy and his sons, Ammon and Ryan, were part of an armed take over of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. Just like with Burr, these men had developed a general distrust in their government. The Bundy’s had less personal reasons for taking over the wildlife refuge. They shared that their concerns were over governmental control of lands in the west. These men stated they were trying to regain control over land that had been taken by the government, This take over, they deemed, deprived the locals of resources and that they had a right to be able to access these

They were exercising their rights to assemble, protect themselves from a tyrannical government, and bear arms. Michelle Fiore, a Nevada counsel woman stated ““Our First and Second Amendments will be dictated by this trial, If they were ever to be convicted, it would send a message that you are totally under the control of the government and don’t ever question your government (M.B., 2017).’’ Eventually, the Bundy’s case was dismissed. “The decision could be appealed by prosecutors. But they would only be able to bring charges again if they won the appeal and the ruling was reversed — and they then got a new indictment from a new grand jury (Johnson, 2018).” In both the Burr and Bundy cases, the prosecution failed to provided sufficient and conclusive evidence that indicated that there had in fact been a crime committed. It is the burden of the court to prove guilt. If the judges would have allowed the insufficient evidence and hearsay, they would have been denying the defendants their rights of due process. The rule of law might have differed in the Bundy trial, because there are more defined laws, as opposed to when the Burr trial had taken