State criminal laws vary widely, so much so that in the early 1960s, a group of jurists, lawyers, and judges who are members of the American Law Institute drafted a series of criminal bills called the Model Penal Code. The purpose of the Model Penal Code was to provide a standardized set of criminal laws that all states could adopt, thereby simplifying the diversity effect of the United States legal system. Although the Model Penal Code has not been widely adopted, a majority of States have incorporated parts of it into their penal codes, and the Model Penal Code survives as a guideline and talking point when state legislators amend their criminal laws. (a) Miscellaneous sources. In each jurisdiction, the law governing criminal procedure will come from different sources. For cases in the federal system, these sources are (1) the U.S. Constitution; (2) federal statutes; (3) the Federal Code of Criminal Procedure; (4) decisions of the local district court; (5) decisions of federal courts based on their decision-making authority under the common law or their oversight of the administration of criminal justice in federal courts (as opposed to decisions interpreting the Constitution, statutes or court rules) and (6) the internal rules of the Department of Justice and other agencies involved in the administration of federal criminal prosecution. At the state level, an even larger group of sources comes into play. The legal norms applicable to the process in a state generally come from nine different sources: (1) the United States Constitution; (2) federal statutes; (3) the constitution of the State; (4) the status of the State; (5) the rules of the ordinary court of the State; (6) the rules of the district court; (7) decisions of State courts on the basis of their customary powers or supervisory authority; (8) the internal administrative standards of the state and local bodies involved in the management of the process; and (9) local ordinances. In many areas where federal legislation does not prescribe a uniform standard and each state may enact its own laws, there is nevertheless a degree of uniformity in the laws of the fifty states, as all or almost all states have adopted a “model” or “unitary” law proposed by a group such as the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. For several reasons, this uniformity has not been achieved in the field of criminal proceedings.
Read Keeler v. Superior Court, 470 p.2d 617 (1970). In the Keeler case, the accused attacked his pregnant ex-wife, and their baby was subsequently stillborn. The California Supreme Court dismissed a murder charge against Keeler under Section 187 of the California Penal Code because the law only criminalized the malicious murder of a “human being.” The court made its decision after reviewing the human definition and concluding that the definition did not include the fetus. The court argued that he could not create a new crime without violating the Due Process Clause, the separation of powers, and Section 6 of the California Penal Code, which prohibits the creation of common crimes. Following the Keeler decision, California legislators amended section 187 of the Criminal Code to admit a fetus, except for abortions (Cal. Penal Code, 2010). And that means Illinois` criminal law will be very different from the criminal law across the border in Missouri.
In fact, we have a criminal law that is different in each of the fifty states of the country. There is also a federal criminal law that is passed by Congress at the federal level. There is criminal law in the District of Columbia, and each city or municipality could also have its own municipal penal code. So how can we have a “criminal law” course if there is no “criminal law”? The second important doctrinal condition for the extensive constitutionalization of criminal procedure was the adoption of broad interpretations of individual guarantees. Even if applied to States, the guarantees of the Bill of Rights, if interpreted restrictively, would have only a limited impact on the criminal justice process. A narrow interpretation of each of the safeguards would result in a system of constitutional regulation that would govern only a small part of the overall process, imposing restrictions that are quite limited in scope and unlikely to have a significant impact on traditional criminal justice practice at the federal and federal levels. Take, for example, the clause in the Fifth Amendment that states that “no person shall be compelled to testify against himself in a criminal matter.” More narrowly, this provision merely prohibits the State from compelling the accused to testify in its criminal proceedings on all incriminating aspects of his participation in the alleged offence. Such an interpretation would constitutionally establish an important structural element of an indictment, but its meaning would be limited to the trial, and even then it would merely repeat a prohibition firmly enshrined in land law. On the other hand, a costly interpretation of the privilege of self-incrimination could make the privilege applicable to a variety of practices that occur throughout the process, imposing restrictions far beyond those found in the law of most (and sometimes all) states. That is what the Supreme Court did.
If one reads the privilege of being “as broad as the calamity from which he seeks to protect himself,” Counselman v. Hitchcock (1892), the court interpreted the self-incrimination clause as follows: guarantee the accused the absolute right not to testify at his trial. procedural restrictions requiring a prompt decision on the exercise of this right not to testify …; prohibit the prosecutor`s opinion on the non-testimony of the accused …; the application of mandatory procedure in non-criminal proceedings (e.g. Grand Jury Trial) to compel a witness to testify which could possibly be used against him or her in subsequent proceedings…; prohibition on admitting the accused`s testimony at trial, obtained by the State by means considered coercive, such as the threat of removal from public office, Garrity v. N.J. (1967); prohibit the admission to trial of statements made by the accused in response to police questioning, unless the accused has been informed of certain rights (including the right to remain silent) and voluntarily waives those rights […]; and prohibiting the mandatory presentation of personal documents in certain circumstances. Each city or municipality could also have its own municipal penal code. The enumerated powers, such as the power to regulate interstate commerce, are those explicitly mentioned in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution. Over the years, however, courts have interpreted the term “interstate commerce” broadly to mean more than goods and services traveling between states.
