U.S. Constitution Article I, Sections 9 and 10 state in part, “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed,” and “No State shall
… pass any Bill of Attainder [or] ex post facto Law.”
So what exactly are a “Bill of Attainder” and “Ex post facto laws”?
A Bill of Attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person, or a group of people, guilty of some crime, and punishing them, often without a trial. The effect of such a bill is to nullify the targeted person’s civil rights, most notably the right to own property (i.e., real property or any other asset such as cash) and, in at least the original usage, the right to life itself.
“Ex post facto laws” are expressly forbidden by the US Constitution in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 (with respect to federal laws) and Article 1, Section 10 (with respect to state laws).
Ex post facto laws are laws which create ambiguity and an inability for people to know what is legal or not legal at any given point in time because these types of laws retroactively change the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. In criminal law, it may criminalize actions that were legal when committed; it may aggravate a crime by bringing it into a more severe category than it was in when it was committed; it may change the punishment prescribed for a crime, as by adding new penalties or extending sentences; it may extend the statute of limitations; or it may alter the rules of evidence in order to make conviction for a crime likelier (or less likelier in some cases) than it would have been when the deed was committed.
Current Events:
When considering these two terms as they relate to current events in the United States of America, it has become clear that at least some states have ignored the clear and unambiguous law of the land as codified in the U.S. Constitution and have imposed Bills of Attainder (e.g., state legislatures and/or local governance bodies instituting reparations) and Ex post factor laws (e.g., the state of New York retroactively temporarily suspending statute of limitations).
Conclusion:
Regardless of the potential guilt or innocence of a person who may or may not have violated a law at a particular point in time, an alleged crime must be adjudicated according to the laws that were codified at the time a crime was alleged to have occurred. There must be clear and unambiguous consequences for any act for which someone can be held liable under the law. We The People must have clear laws on which we can refer to and rely upon, otherwise we have nothing but a subjective and arbitrary system of injustice.
Editor’s note: Ms. Witherspoon is running for State Representative in the 42 Assembly District.
