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The Indictment: The Mcmartin Trial

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The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial, has been the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history; it lasted more than 5 years and it cost the Us more than 15 million dollars.(Linder) The McMartin case was born when a child, who attended a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California. The preschool was owned by the Mc Martin family. The child reported being raped, it hit the breaking news in no time. The family was quickly arrested and what continued after would change their lives forever. After the arrest hundreds of and hundreds of children started to testify that they as well had been abused. The childrens abuse stories were gruesome and descriptive. Since the case gained popularity in no time it quickly began to unfold as a mass hysteria among the …show more content…

The people handling the McMartin case handled the evidence brought to them a little different than usual. Even though the prosecutors were hit with harsh evidence from the beginning they pushed it to the side. For example, in the movie “The Indictment: McMartin Trials” , a movie based on the real life events of the McMartin case, the kid who first stated being raped and his mother later changed their statement. The mother mentioned to one of the officers that her boyfriend had been the one who sexually abused the toddler. Also, the mother suffered from alcoholism and serial mental illnesses. This caused tention between the prosecutors but they quickly found a solution. The police held back this immense evidence because of the credibility and the advancement of the trial. They didn’t wanna take a change by changing the statement, it gave no case to the police and they didn’t wanna take a chance on it. Instead they decided to put that evidence to the side and continue prosecuting the McMartin family. The lack of professionalism and selfishness of the court fed the case more unethical

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They shed light on how the prosecution built their case. The authors also explains in detail on how the media and the people fixation on the case could have undermined it. Walker, C., & Filia, M. (2011). The Casey Anthony murder trial: a modern American tragedy.

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The Casey Anthony case is the trial of Casey Anthony for the death and murder of Caylee Anthony. The two parties in this case are Casey Anthony against the state of Florida. The trial is a criminal case because it is involving a murder of a child. The trial was originally heard in state court. Although Casey Anthony plead not guilty on the first degree murder charge, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated manslaughter of a child, she was convicted of the misdemeanor which was giving false information to the police and authorities and was given 4 consecutive years of jail time (one year per count) and was fined 1,000$ for each of her four counts (4,000$ in total).

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Even when Michael’s new defense team, through the innocence project, found a crime that was eerily similar to the method of murder and subsequent events to the one that Michael was convicted of, the new prosecutor in Williamson County fought hard to keep DNA testing from taking place, even stating that they objected to the testing now because the defense hadn’t requested it before (Morton, 2014). There was further evidence of ineffectiveness in that the coroner who’d changed his estimated time of death between the autopsy and trial, had come under scrutiny for his findings in this case, as well as several others, with claims of gross errors “including one case where he came to the conclusion that a man who’d been stabbed in the back had committed suicide” (Morton, 2014). This was only one of the many injustices that were committed against Michael Morton throughout his trial. In August of 2006, the defense was finally granted permission to perform DNA testing on the items that had been taken from his wife’s body (Morton, 2014). Although this testing did not reveal any information about the guilty party, it did at least give Michael the knowledge that Chris was not sexually violated before or after her death (Morton,

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The case became popular because as millions of people viewed the trial on live-stream video feeds to see the mother, who was caught partying less than a week after her daughter went missing. Investigators found skeletal parts of the girl’s body that was dumped in the

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The investigation’s goal was to expose Neil Goldschmidt for his sexual affairs with a 14 year old girl. The author also helped people know how greatly these events impacted the girl. She was a smart girl with a strong ambition prior to the raping, but afterwards she dropped out of school, had many neurological diseases such as depression and post traumatic stress disorder, and was arrested numerous times due to possession of drugs (Jaquiss). Her life was completely ruined, yet she still looked up to Goldschmidt. ““I want to personally make sure you get shit for this,” she told Portland officer Clarence Lankis, according to his report.

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The caregivers lacked commitment, compassion, conscientiousness, fairness and honesty, and if they had taken their jobs seriously probably Tomcik wouldn’t have suffered as much. Trial began on July 22, 1991 and the decision was made on October 7, 1991. Tomcik’s total damage came out to be $85,000 according to the text. The defendants were proven wrong and they were charged. The court did the right thing, but I think a stricter action should have been taken against the defendants.

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Her case was dragged out for the longest with unanswered questions and assumptions. Many were beginning to believe that Tawana caused her own rape. Digging

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Once the awareness of the sex abuse became known, the investigation began. During the investigation, witnesses of the abuse came forward

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Tainted Justice System MINNEAPOLIS- In the case against Hannah Overton, who was wrongfully accused of killing her foster child by forcing salt down the child’s throat. Overton spent 17 years of her life sentence in prison, missing her 5 other kids grow up. She fell victim to a justice system that did not take the time for a fair prosecution process. This is just one case that represents a multitude of wrongfully prosecuted court cases.

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The proceedings were very one sided. Pabst did not listen to any of Kaitlynn’s testimony. Instead she states, “Once there was an affirmative verbal agreement to have sex, so consent was given, she’s really fuzzy on whether or not she verbally withdrew that consent. So, it’s not fair for us as prosecutors to expect a suspect to read someone’s mind when they’ve verbally consented” (Krakauer 100). Kaitlynn stated many times to the police and the Dean

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As with any criminal case, there are always a number of issues pertaining the stages of the crime and also the media and the general public’s opinion of the case. Many of the issues and explicit actions of certain individuals that had happened during the Corryn Rayney case had affected the interpretation of the case in someway for both government workers and the general public. By analysing the issues of the case, it allows a much more detailed view on the case and how most of the issues are linked in one way or another. One of the issues regarding this case was where a police officer had been found attempting to pressure forensic pathologists to alter their case reports to align with their best interests.

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The trial began in 2006, evidence upon evidence was brought in to support the 27 counts of murder. The defense brought into question the legitimacy of

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Innocent people who are incriminated under improper evidence are hanged. Parallel in the McMartin day care abuse case, the McMartin family, who administrate the establishment, and other members are accused illegally of having abused sexually numerously of the children under their vigilance. The accusations used against the McMartin

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Kids were put in juvenile for the most simplest minor offenses. Offenses such as arguing and disrespecting adults to getting into school fights. These little incidents were so minor and could had been resolved easily, yet teens got prison time for minor crimes. According to William Ecenbarger in his book Kids For Cash, he writes about the many different offenses that kids got into and how they were punished and treated for their minor offenses and put into juvenile, and how Judge Mark Ciavarella took advantage of this. Cases like a fifteen year old boy who gets charged for a misdemeanor for showing disrespect to his grandfather and being placed on probation.

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The discretion of the case was significant in the regard of the defense, which countered some contradicted evidences. The evidences from the trial and the hearing preliminaries have revealed that the children were coached. The testimony showed lack of credibility on the issues and showing the significance of the discretion on the defense. McMartin told his attorney that he did not do it and his attorney used his discretion and believed him.

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