Courtroom 302

Judge Reibman held a hearing in Oct. 2014 on contempt charges against Dr. Kolecki for not showing up at the evaluation, but the charges were later dropped. Dr. Kolecki thought there was ex parte communication between the judge and Mrs. Kolecki’s attorney, Waldron, but later agreed that wasn’t the case.

Forcelli explains his displeasure of our broken criminal justice system when he states, “The sad part is that getting an innocent man out of jail is way, way, way harder than putting a guilty man in jail.” When detectives are constantly pressured to close cases and produce high conviction rates it can cause in accuracies in convictions. Garry’s case is a perfect example of how a case with minimal evidence can result in an innocent getting placed in prison. Garry has sat in prison for over 20 years waiting to appeal his case and plead his innocence. The ease of convicting an innocent man should be consistent with difficulty of exonerating an innocent man. In Garry’s case he awaits a decision from a judge where the judge has three options, to exonerate him, grant a retrial, or

In 2002, Fred Kaufman was appointed to the case, in response to a request by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. He was the same lawyer that helped with another miscarriage of justice of Guy Paul Morin. If Fred Kaufman had been originally signed to the case, it would have been easily dealt with. Therefore, because it took 50 years to finally clear his name, the investigation was insufficient.

Racial prejudice against McMillian is shown when the case was moved to a predominantly white county, therefore excluding other African-Americans from participating in the trail. Another example of racial prejudice against McMillian is shown when the court determines him to be guilty, despite hundreds of alibis proving his innocence and faulty allegations (Stevenson, 2014, p. 49-52, 66). These two examples show how racism plagues the American criminal

My understanding of the court system has changed almost weekly from the beginning of my semester. I do understand things that I never thought I would’ve have known or even cared about in the least. The book Courtroom 302 has brought an even different side of thinking into this. The book goes into detail about the criminal court in Chicago. He watches all of the actions and different trials that come and go in the courtroom 302. He presents many different cases throughout the book which gives more insight then just a single case.

In this paper I will be answering, “Many people believed that justice had been served when Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede were arrested, prosecuted, and convicted. Italy’s high court recently reversed the convictions of Amanda and Raffaelle. After reading the books, which court do you think got it right—the lower trial court with the guilty verdict or the high court with the not guilty verdict? Why?” I will provide at least three examples, with at least one example coming from each book, to support my response. The books “Honor bound” and “Murder in Italy” talk about the Amanda Knox trial. Amanda’s roommate Meredith Kercher, was found murdered in their home leaving the main suspects to be Amanda and her boyfriend Raffaelle Sollecito.

The memory of incidents such as O. J. Simpson’s high profile criminal trial, the assault of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1992, and the 2009 arrest and charging of Harvard Professor Henry Gates for racial profiling still freshly linger in the minds of many Americans. The people’s perceptions of justice in these situations continue to represent how the criminal justice system is viewed in present times, and continue defining racial disparity in America (Mauer, 2011).

The only person able to drop his charges was the Governor of California who is presently still in office;

During the early nineteen hundreds many people especially in the south were often convicted of crimes for no other reason than their skin color and contrary to many ideas about our court system, we have not always been the most honest and unbiased people. One prime example of this is the case of the Scottsboro Boys and how they were accused of rape and had to go to court numerous times, almost everytime ending in the death sentence. The evidence in the case clearly points towards the innocence of the Scottsboro boys, evidence such as unclear stories from the girls, lack of bruises and marks indicating assault as well as a previous history of prostitution from both of the girls. This evidence helps to prove that Charles Weems and the Scottsboro boys were innocent and wrongly accused and convicted.

Duane Buck, a death row inmate, has served more than twenty one years for murdering his ex-girlfriend Debra Gardner and Kenneth Butler. He accused Kenneth for sleeping with Debra and also shot his stepsister in the chest, who survived. After shooting Kenneth, Gardner ran to the street and was chased until she was gunned down while her children watched. Even though the crime should be punished, bucks attorneys argue Mr. Buck was denied a fair trial. Walter Quijano, a psychologist, gave his testimony during the trial stating that Buck was more likely to be a future danger because of his racial color. What surprises everyone is that Buck’s defense lawyer was the one who called Quijano and evoke the testimony. Even though the racial testimony had no place in the trial it still didn’t justify whether they should throw out the death sentence. No racial testimony appeared to be in his early appeals due to his counsel’s impotence for introducing it. Still it was very believable because this was not the first case Quijano made a similar testimony that had violated an inmate’s constitutional rights. Bucks lawyers tried to use this information to fight for Buck but they were not successful because the courts ruled Buck had waited too long to raise the issue. The argument here is if Buck is

Darryl Hunt is an African American born in 1965 in North Carolina. In 1984, he was convicted wrongfully of rape and murder of Deborah Sykes, a young white woman working as a newspaper editor. This paper researches oh his wrongful conviction in North Carolina. Darryl Hunt served nineteen and a half years before DNA evidence exonerated him. The charges leveled against him were because of inconsistencies in the initial stages of the case. An all-white bench convicted the then nineteen-year-old Hunt, even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime. A hotel employee made false claims that he saw Hunt enter the hotel bathroom, and later emerge with bloodstained towels. Other witnesses also fixed Hunt to the case.

After hearing all testimonies and seeing all evidence, Kilpatrick was offered a plea deal in the end which he accepted, pleading guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and assault. He was ordered to serve four months in jail, pay up to $1 million in restitution, surrender his license to practice law, and serve five years’ probation. This sentence ended his term as Mayor of Detroit in September 2008, and Kilpatrick also agreed he wouldn’t run for office during his five year probation. The deal meant that he was to turn over his state pension, these charges were also brought in with the other eight with Kym Worthy’s.

As because of the coroner’s inaccurate judgement, it had worsened Kabuo situation in the trail. Now that all the evidences had turned against Kabuo, it has made others to focus mainly on Kabuo, and think that he is behind of all this. Later on, abroad Kabuo’s ship Art Moran n the mooring rope and fishing gaff with the victim’s blood on it. With all those evidences it would have proven Kabuo to be the murderer, but new evidences came into existences to overturn the entire situation and twisted the case as of being an accident rather than a first degree murder case. If it wasn’t for prejudice this trail would never has gone so far or would never had happened in the first place.

Then Locallo has to deal with the politics involved. Caruso Sr. is an apparent mobster, and he raises hell in the courtroom because he believes that the eighteen-year term that his son received is too harsh considering that the other two men involved will probably get probation. Caruso tries to make a point that the media and politics forced Locallo into a corner, but Locallo reminds him that his son “planned the attack, led the attack, and …finished the attack,” (Bogira p. 315). The prejudice issue was risen when the Supreme Court insured that the jury would be color-blind, but due to the many issues that surround the reasons for few black jurors (voir dire), only two black women made the jury and no black males. Last the issue of compassion, which allows first-time offenders to receive a lesser sentence. Locallo sentenced Caruso’s co-defendants to probation because the evidence against them wasn’t really there compared to Caruso Jr. himself. As far as Caruso’s sentencing, Judge Locallo decided to give him eight years, because with the other two men only getting probation he didn’t want to look inconsistent by giving Caruso a very stiff sentence.

Almost every member of the black community in Maycomb County is admirable in their personalities and innocent in their nature, and this generalisation makes the crimes against the black community all the worse. Tom Robinson, a man discriminated and accused of a crime that he didn’t commit has come forth to the justice system. The color of his skin determines everything from his background too if he’s guilty or not. A black man’s life is unable to prove innocence because of his race. Poverty has affected many people back in the 1960’s but, if a black man or women were to experience this they would be put on the white