If a person is arrested in the United States, the Constitution guarantees that the right of habeus corpus will be preserved. Amendment V guarantees that no one will be deprived of "life, liberty or property, without due process of law". That means that the law enforcement officials have 48 hours--2 days exactly--to charge the person with a crime, or release him or her. No one can be held more than 48 hours on suspicion alone. No one can sue for false arrest unless he or she has been detained more than 48 hours without charge, or without being formally accused of a crime.
If a person is detained for 48 hours--or if it looks as if he will be--his lawyer can ask that he be brought before a judge, or the lawyer may ask the judge to issue a writ of habeus corpus, meaning bring us the person in the flesh, or let's have the body ( brought before a judge ).
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