When British kings wanted to dispose of troublesome enemies – real or imagined – they often had them or their colleagues arrested on pretextual charges and then brutally tortured until confessions were extracted. The confessions were then read aloud during so-called trials; and, of course, the defendant was convicted of whatever crime was the subject of the confession.
All this was done in order to satisfy the political, and in many cases the personal, desires of the monarch by creating the impression of due process.
Often the torture occurred in remote places, so remote that there was no government there, and the king and his counselors could argue that the protections of the British traditions of fair play – the British do not have a written Constitution, but rather a set of traditions – was not violated because the torture occurred in a place where the traditions did not apply.
When one of the victims of this practice was an official who had previously engaged in perpetrating it, the House of Commons, many of whose members feared becoming victims of the monarch’s desires, adopted the principle of habeas corpus. That ancient right compelled the jailer of any person anywhere to bring the jailed person before a neutral magistrate and justify the confinement.
Due process has numerous definitions and aspects, but for constitutional purposes it basically means that all charged persons are presumed innocent and entitled to a written notice of the charges, a speedy and fair hearing before a neutral fact finder, a right to appeal; and the entire process imbued with fairness and a profound recognition of personal innocence until guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Due process also explicitly prohibits the use of torture.
Hellbound and Down 