The Sixth Amendment: Providing Justice for All Before the Revolutionary War, if the English accused a colonist of a crime, he or she would most likely receive an unfair trial and prison sentence. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights, they believed that all Americans deserved rights that the English had not granted them. The Sixth Amendment grants many legal rights to citizens of the United States that protect them from being wrongly convicted of crimes. The 6th Amendment is the most important amendment to the United States Constitution. The 6th Amendment guarantees a person charged with a mandatory crime trial the right to present witnesses in his defense. The importance of mandatory trial is illustrated in the case of Washington v. Texas, where Jackie Washington was tried for murder. A state court ruled that Washington could not have an accomplice to the crime testify in his defense. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the state's refusal to grant the defendant a capable witness violated the Sixth Amendment. Therefore, the Supreme Court overturned the c...