In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Atticus Finch said, “...our courts are great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal” (Lee 274). Atticus meant once a person steps into a courtroom, his or her socio-economic standing, race, gender, or religion does not matter. That statement is correct when it comes to the spirit of the judicial system, but it is not true in practice. Overall the courts in the United States do not treat all people equally. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson was convicted of raping Mayella Ewell. This got him sent to a prison camp. There would be no issue with this conviction if there had been any solid evidence. Mayella never went to a doctor about the alleged rape, and the only witness didn’t even see anything happen. The case against Robinson was purely circumstantial evidence. There was most certainly reasonable doubt that he did it, but he was black. In Maycomb people thought of African-Americans as untrustworthy animals, so the jury convicted him. They decided that Robinson didn’t deserve to live because he was black, and Mayella …show more content…
Jeffery was driving and got pulled over for a minor infraction, and was asked if he was on any medications. He told the truth and told the police about his morphine prescription, and was immediately taken to jail. It took over a year to get the not guilty verdict. Jeffery had a signed letter from his doctors that said he could drive with the morphine. People have a prejudice against people who take morphine because it is a commonly abused drug, but that did not make everyone who had to take morphine bad. If Jeffrey hadn’t had the funds to get a good lawyer, he would have been called guilty. Jeffrey was already depressed when this happened, and it caused him to go off his medication. This was a very dangerous thing to do because of how the body gets used to
For the offender the only factor that affected her criminal behaviour was self-interest. Whether she followed the victim to murder or not, to some extent she wanted to extract some form of revenge. This was confirmed during the trial when the passenger who was in the car with the offender said “She was sick of them” and followed them as a means of teaching them a lesson. The offender’s defence relied on proving that at the time of the incident the factors affecting her were psychological and that her actions were uncontrollable due to her consumption of alcohol and her use of cannabis, heroin and valium in combination with her bipolar disorder. However this was dismissed upon the testimony of Susan Pullman, a neuropsychologist who proved that the offender was not experiencing mania at the time of the incident.
Many believe that he is innocent because he was also attacked, but his injuries were non life-threatening, while his whole family was slaughtered. He lied to authorities on many occasions, trying to make himself seem like he was innocent with no motives. He lied about an affair that he had with Judith DeWitt, that he had spent a weekend with in San Antonio, whom told Special Forces that she had “spent time” with him, and that they had fondled each other. MacDonald also told police that he had a doctor for Colette, but there was no record of the doctor, and Mildred Kassab testified at trial that Colette told her she was concerned because she did not have a doctor. Jeffrey tried to cover his tracks by attacking himself and lying to authorities, and many people believe he is innocent because of what he has done to save himself. However, I
Giving the evidence of the crime, Lacey wasn’t mentally stable, to go into a home where you were taken in by a family and shoot your girlfriend in the head for no reason, shows that he should have been evaluated after they found out that his sister was abusing him and that he had a rough home. Someone should have given him the time of treatment and counseling, but he wasn’t. Not saying that it justifies what he had done, there just obviously shows that he wasn’t
Jeffrey Dahmer, one of the most famous serial killers, was a sick and extremely twisted man. Rape, necrophilia, dismemberment, and cannibalism were all involved in Dahmer’s murders. Jeffrey Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on May 21, 1960. Dahmer had a fairly normal childhood. His parents recall that Jeffrey was an “energetic and happy child.” Dahmer’s parents believe something went wrong with their son at around the age of four after he had a surgery to try and correct a double hernia. He started becoming distant at around age 10; soon, his interest involved dead animals and drinking. Eventually, his parents grew tired of his outrageous drinking problem and Jeffrey’s father made him enlist in the army. Soon enough, he was kicked out
Since the beginning of the trial everyone had mixed responses toward this controversy, but about 75% citizen of Maycomb believed Tom Robinson was guilty because he was black. “That n****r totally deserved it” commented Bob Ewell the father of Mayella Ewell. “It's like killing an innocent songbird ya know” said Mr.Underwood about the incident. After all twelve white, racist
To start, I will predict the case verdict of Tom Robinson. There is reasoning why he is guilty, and reasoning why he may not guilty. The first evidence that, he is guilty is that no black man has won a trial against a white person in court during that point in time. During that point in time racism was extremely common. Whites looked down at blacks just because the color of their skin. From their perspective, they were the part of the hierarchy, while the black were considered apart of the lower class. The whites thought that by putting the blacks down it was there from of authority, and showing their power. From that you can see that the chances of Tom, a black man wining a case against a white woman were slim. In addition, is when Mayella testified her story. When she first got up the chair she started to cry, she said it was because of Atticus scaring her.
Jason was an uber driver and he was just your average ‘joe’. He did not have any history of mental health, and was not on any medication. He basically seemed like a normal person. Earlier
The Maycomb jury accused Tom Robinson guilty of rape of Mayella Ewell, not because they truly thought he was guilty; he was wrongfully convicted because of our town’s long time “honor code” of our society. Our “honor code” is nothing but a meaningless, unbroken rule saying that all whites are infallible, while all negroes are immoral and can’t be trusted around anyone. If a white person were to break this “code”, that person would be considered an outcast in our town. Of course, as I’ve said before, some whites and negroes are immoral and can’t be trusted around anyone. Take the Ewells, for example. Maycomb despises them, and barely keeps them isolated from the rest of town. They represent Maycomb’s worst side, but their word is still taken over a black man’s word, simply because they’re white. None of the jury members wanted to risk their own reputations and be
Jeffrey's imprisonment was very literal, but also a reflection of the constricting forces acting on any soul that has been denied it's humanity. In The Academic Postmodern and the Rule of Literature, David Simpson declares that "humanity cannot be realized without the dignity of that the relevant person first being acknowledged". In prison, Jeffrey reflects on the visionary alternatives, saying "And I will emerge again from between the legs of my mother, a slighter and more beautiful baby, destined for a different life, in which I am masterful, sleek as a deer, a winner" (64). Clearly, because Jeffrey never experienced any form of human kindness or validation that might point towards the acknowledgement of his dignity, the essence of "winning" was never possible for him. His humanity was confined to a figurative cage while his body was constricted in a very literal one. Simpson is saying that had someone bothered to acknowledged Jeffrey's dignity, he would not have lost his sense of humanity and murdered his boss, resulting in his literally and metaphorically permanent imprisonment.
In the month of January 1992, Judge Laurence Gram Jr. was presiding over the Milwaukee County Circuit Court at the beginning of Jeffrey Dahmer’s trial. Defense Attorney Gerald Boyle represented the defendant Jeffrey Dahmer whilst District Attorney E. Michael McCann spoke for the state of Wisconsin. Dahmer was charged with murdering fifteen individuals. During the initial part of the court proceedings, Dahmer’s defense claimed that he was clinically insane. In due course, the jury had to decide whether this insanity claim was factual or not: Was Jeffrey Dahmer certifiably insane? Did his admission of guilt founded on mental illness stand up in court or was he sane and guilty? Was he or was he not in control of himself when he murdered fifteen
Throughout Jeffs time at this so called “prison,” he is constantly being stripped of all of his freedom, as well as his feelings. Although he is a convict, many of the experiments taking place on him are inhumane; it becomes increasingly clear in the dialog between Jeff, and the head scientist at this prison, Abnesti. Towards the end of the story, when Jeff is reluctant to give Heather the “Darkenfloxxed,” Abnesti is quoted saying, “Do I remember birthdays around here? When a certain individual got athlete’s foot on his groin on a Sunday, did a certain other individual drive over to Rexall and pick up a prescription, paying for it with his own personal money?” Abnesti is using his minuscule good deeds in the past to prove that he is still on Jeff's side; indicating that Abnesti is an unstable human being, who does not feel how wildly this experiment has gotten out of hand. Also, he is
On October 27, 1984 John Lane brutally murdered his girlfriend’s four year old daughter, Angela Palmer. John had allegedly said that the child had turned green and ugly and tried to kill him while she identified herself as Lucifer. He had punched Angela giving her a scalp laceration and pushing her with force into the kitchen oven. While the young girl was in the oven Lane wedged a chair up against the door making it so the child could not escape, he then turned the oven on as high as the settings would allow. Angela screamed in agonizing pain and the neighbors heard but did not call the law enforcement until the yelling went silent, her body was left to burn. It was the smell and smoke that would bring local law enforcement to the apartment where as they opened the door smoke would pour out. After finding the source of smoke the officer opened the oven to find the small child deceased inside. John Lane and the girlfriend, Cynthia Palmer, were taken into custody where they were both charged with murder but Cynthia’s charge was later reduced to manslaughter and then acquitted of. As the trail would begin John would plead innocent as reason of insanity. His lawyer was smart to avoid the trial by jury. The trial went on in front of the judge and a psychiatrist had testified that Lane did know what he was doing at the time was wrong and that there would be consequences behind them.
Not long after his dishonorable discharge, Dahmer was sent to live with his grandmother where he got a job, but before long was arrested for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Soon, the offenses worsened as his alcoholism and emotional issues intensified, including but not limited to indecent exposure, child molestation, and culminating with his arrest for multiple murders in July of 1991. At the 1989 sentencing of Dahmer for child molestation, his father, Lionel Dahmer stated, “There was something missing in Jeff.... We call it a "conscience"... that had either died or had never
His background and early life mentioned earlier proves his actions of aggression and impulsivity. His diagnosis is ASPD comorbid with substance abuse, and accompanied with sadistic, necrophilia, and obsessive features. The sadistic and obsessive feature comes from his sexual pleasure to harm and control others. Also his obsessive features can be linked with his canabalism. “Dahmer reported that he felt an intense need of consuming the flesh of the dead body in order to incoporate the other in his own self, and he experienced this as a sexual sense of closeness and unification” (Martens,2011, pg.504). His necrophilia feature has been present sense his early adolescence. His low self-esteem, and unsocial behaviors may have easily led him down the path to developing ASPD and his other features. Jeffery’s mother also “suffered from hysteria, depression, suicidal
In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Tom Robinson, the black man falsely convicted of rape, had absolutely no chance of a fair trial. There is proof of this in the time period in which it occurred as well as evidence from the novel itself. Tom Robinson had an unfair trial because it was his word against the Ewell’s, a white, trashy family.