Richard Francis is a historian on American Culture, an author, and a biographer. Francis was an American Studies Research Fellow at Harvard, taught at the universities of Manchester and Missouri for American Literature. Some of his well known published books include Judge Sewall's Apology, Ann the Word, Bingo, Blackpool Vanishes, Prospect Hill, and many more. Judge Sewall's Apology is about Samuel Sewall who was one of the main judges of the Salem witch trials of 1692. Sewall was one of the only judges of the nine appointed that heard the case and made a public apology.
The written story of how Clarence Earl Gideon, a poor Florida man, went from a convicted criminal to ultimately redefining legal history is astounding. The Supreme Court commonly dismisses more cases than it accepts and the fact that a handwritten petition from a prison inmate was accepted shows that even the seemingly most insignificant person can make a difference in our society. The book’s literature is highly legalistic but constantly provides a detailed account of how the judicial system is constructed. Coming from a regular college student standpoint with no previous formal law education, this makes the underlying concept easier to grasp. The story’s setting during the time of the Gideon case, showed how the legal system was constructed towards the growing concept of a defendant’s rights.
Daniel Holtzclaw is an ex-Oklahoma City officer who is convicted of rape along with other several charges after he brutally abused many African American women over the course of six months. Daniel Holtzclaw was sentenced to 263 years in prison for the charges filed against him. Holtzclaw was convicted for 18 of 36 counts which included first-degree rape. Holtzclaw’s adamant lawyers tried to start a new trial by stating that there was not enough evidence but it was a lost cause although they did not want to accept it. There were several of Holtzclaw’s victims who obstinately spoke out about their abuse done by Holtzclaw himself.
f one followed the similarities of King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," they would notice that King may have been somewhat influenced by Thoreau's essay. The two essays also have many differences that are evident throughout analysis of the two essays that divide individual interpretation of each text. But it is obvious that the overall purpose of these two essays is to persuade the audiences that civil disobedience is necessary if there is social injustice in the government that governs over people.
Author and lawyer Bryan Stevenson chronicles the unjust and inhumane stories of multiple prisoners throughout the South. He tries to appeal and save each individual from unethical sentences that were handed down upon them. Stevenson uses this book as way to shine a very bright light on the unfair practices and sentences that consistently happen throughout American court rooms to the mentally ill and the vulnerable. He is able to provide a prologue for each prisoner and case he encounters that provides crucial information that can potentially alter whether each client would end up dying in prison, or have the potential to see life outside of cement walls and bars. Stevenson is able to show readers the unfair practices of not only prosecutors
Reality and Truth What is reality? Different people might have different answers to this question. Everyone has his own way to see things happen in a particular situation. Alexie’s text entitled “Because My Father Always Said That He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi
In 1961 the Florida Supreme Court denied Clarence Gideon’s request for an appointed lawyer during his trial. Gideon was poor and could not afford a lawyer and he was uneducated so he could not properly defend himself. His case applies to the Sixth Amendment which guarantees that the accused has the right to an attorney if they want one, and depriving someone’s right to counsel is a violation of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Despite his criminal background, Clarence Gideon’s appeal to the United States Supreme Court in 1963 resulted in the expansion of the right to counsel, an important element of due process, for all Americans.
In 1846, Scott sued his and his family’s freedom, but was rejected by the Supreme Court 11 years later. The final ruling had an immense impact politically, economically and socially. (Bell. “Civil War on the Western Border”). Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote an opinion against Scott, which makes logical sense since he is a southerner.
The legal system, a system that has been implemented within the United States government in order to solve problems, has been utilized in order to settle conflicts for centuries. By using the legal system, one can achieve a verdict without having biased opinions towards the matter at hand. As the years past, many interesting cases that have gone through the legal system but none more interesting than the inmate, Robert Lee Brock, who sued a correctional officer and facility for 27 million dollars due to the fact that they took an altered pipe from his possession. Though many people thought this case to be one of the most bizarre circumstances in which an individual sued another entity, Brock thought otherwise. Throughout this essay, the objective
As seen throughout significant events in history, strong leaders are able to mold language into a powerful tool, which they utilize for specific goals. In Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and Henry David Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, many rhetorical devices such as ethos and the difference between just and unjust laws play a direct role in exemplifying main ideas throughout the essays. Although the essays were very similar, they did differ in the tone and audience they attracted. King and Thoreau are able to solidify their main ideas by establishing ethos in both essays.
Have you ever wondered how many contradictory thoughts that you have in a single day? How often do your actions go against thinking? How many times have you felt your feelings against the principles and beliefs of yourself? Most of the time we do not recognize
In Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, he writes to illustrate the injustices of the judicial system to its readers. To do so, Stevenson utilizes multiple writing styles that provide variety and helps keep the reader engaged in the topic. Such methods of his include the use of anecdotes from his personal experiences, statistics, and specific facts that apply to cases Stevenson had worked on as well as specific facts that pertain to particular states. The most prominent writing tool that Stevenson included in Just Mercy is the incorporation of anecdotes from cases that he himself had worked on as a nonprofit lawyer defending those who were unrightfully sentenced to die in prison.
Dear Members of the Jury, I am writing you this letter to tell to you that Tom Robinson should be proven not guilty. This case would have never happened if the truth would have been told and it wasn’t a case between black and white. There are many ways that Robinson is not guilty. One of these reasons that Tom Robinson is not guilty is that if you listened to the Sheriff 's testimony he stumbled frequently and when he said something and then Atticus would say something different he would agree with Atticus. Tom Robinson is a very polite man with great manners, which you could take into consideration that he wouldn’t dare hurt this woman in this kind of manner.
These arguments help put all of the arrest and the reactions behind the arrest in context because of the numerous arrest and the controversy surrounding these arrest leading up to even the arrest of major figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The discussion she held with people who were present during the movement along with her analysis of writings such as the Letter from Birmingham Jail, help to build contextual evidence and support her claims regarding conditions and the effect of arrest on the movement. Her writing flows with ease as she explains in chronological order the evolution of arrest during the time beginning in the early 1960s. However, the argument is not fully orchestrated because Colley she sometimes tries to cover more material than necessary and leaves some of the most important facts in order to cover points which she views as extremely important.
The divide between dualism and physicalism is a driving philosophical question in the discussion of the nature of mind and body. While dualists argue that the mind is an immaterial substance that transcends extension, physicalists believe that everything is physical or supervenes on the physical. A common form of physicalism is set forth in the type-identity thesis, which asserts that every type of mental state is identical to a type of physical state. The token-identity thesis is another, much narrower form which only equates an individual thought to an individual brain state. Physicalism comes to mean that there is nothing in the world that is not physical.
