A Brief Summary Of The Cotton Case

The Massachusetts Bay Colony Case Against Anne Hutchinson is a transcription of a court trial. The document was written in 1637 by an unnamed person, who worked for the court. It was written to keep a record of the trial and to set a precedent for future trials. Anne Hutchinson was on trial for holding and practicing beliefs that were considered threatening to the stability of the church and community. Anne Hutchinson was convicted of antinomianism and was subsequently excommunicated from the colony. After leaving Massachusetts Bay, Anne went on to help found Portsmouth, Rhode Island. After Portsmouth, Anne Hutchinson went to Long Island where she was killed.

You would have to have an account and a note of exactly what was seen or heard or anything witnessed. You would need to state why it was a concern to you and the date and time this occurred. You would need to have kept a log and it must be true and accurate.

In the past decade, eyewitness testimonies have cast a shadow on what is wrong with the justice system in today’s society. Before we had the advanced technology, we have today, eyewitness testimonies were solid cold-hard facts when it came to proving the defendant was guilty. However, time has changed and eyewitness testimonies have proven to be the leading causes of wrongful convictions due to misidentification. The Thompson and Cotton case is a perfect example of how eyewitness testimonies can put an innocent man behind bars.

Research shows that the human mind is not like a tape recorder, we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Instead, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene; it must be preserved carefully, or it can be contaminated. A case I would like to mention is the Calvin Willis Case. One night in 1982, three young girls were sleeping alone in a Shreveport, Louisiana home when a man in cowboy boots came into the house and raped the oldest girl, who was Ten years old. When police started to investigate the rape, the three girls all remembered the attack differently. One police report said the Ten year old victim didn’t see her attacker’s face. Another report which wasn’t introduced at trial said she identified Calvin Willis, who lived in the neighbourhood. The girl’s mother testified at trial that neighbours had mentioned Willis’s name when discussing who might have committed the crime. The victim testified that she was shown photos and told to pick the man without a full beard. She testified that she didn’t pick anyone, police said she picked Willis. Willis was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. In 2003, DNA testing proved Willis’ innocence and he was released. He had served nearly Twenty Two years in prison for a crime he didn’t

In the wake of the incidents that gave birth to the “black lives matter movement”, I feel compelled to base my paper on the Criminal Justice System, the history and current state, and reform that are needed to overhaul and transform the system into a rehabilitative and redemptive program. In light of this, the case of Ronald cotton caught my attention, a case that sheds light on all aspects of the system, and also exemplifies the principles of strength and resilience. On January 18, 1985, Ronald Cotton was sentenced to life in prison plus fifty years (Thompson-Cannino, Cotton, & Torneo, 2009). An innocent man’s life changed on that day, this does not minimize the fact that a woman was raped and violated and she picked the wrong guy in the lineup. This young man turned himself in, confident he had nothing to hide, but his world was shattered when he walked into the trap of fitting a profile of a lineup, he walked into a “Harsh and heavy-handed tactics” (Walters, Clark, Gingerich, & Meltzer, 2007) which the criminal justice system is notorious for by “treating offenders as subhuman entities that need punishment to change”, this method of processing and handling of criminals has been applauded by those who live by the creed “crime and punishment”. (Saleebey & Clark p.123). Therefore, delivering punishment via the criminal justice system in the United States is a truly complex social act in need of sweeping reform (Saleebey & Clark p.125).

Instead of judging the crime fairly, the police jumped to conclusion based on little evidences. When Ronald Cotton went to the police station to make things right, they have already decided he is guilty. The police used a picture drawn from a victim’s words, a flashlight, and a piece of dirt that came from a shoe lace as evidence, which could come from anyone, to arrest him at first. They were angry he dated a white girl, which shows they took the case personal. As Ronald cotton wrote, “I looked Sully real steady in the eye, Like a lot of people in town, he didn’t like the fact that I had dated white girls.” (/////_). In addition, the cop excluded Ms. Reynold’s evidence which didn’t testify Ronald Cotton as the rapist. In the day of the lineup,

After Jennifer Thompson-Cannino was raped in 1984, she identified a man in a police lineup and in court as her attacker. The detective conducting the lineup told Jennifer that she had done great, confirming that she had chosen the suspect. Eleven years later, DNA evidence proved that the suspect, Ronald Cotton, had been wrongfully convicted of the rape. A man named Bobby Poole, who Thompson testified she had never seen before, was the man who actually raped her. Ronald and Jennifer's book, picking cotton, portrays common factors that contribute to erroneous convictions. Although it addresses a variety of important issues, the most crucial is how subtle factors like eyewitness misidentification, confirmation bias and nature of a defendant can

One of the most significant court cases in the 1800s was the Dred Scott v. Sanford case in 1857 (Kelly, 2014). This case gripped the nation right as the North and the South became further and further apart. The Scott v. Sanford case deepened the boundary closer to Civil War. Scott v. Sanford drew in everyone’s attention and led to the rally of a lifetime. The case created problems and changes in the United States and the significance of this case is still awed by today.

The case of Mills v. Rogers has a significant importance in virtue of the human, civil and constitutional rights of the patients who are hospitalized at mental institutions. Despite the fact whether the patient was there voluntarily or contrary, Rogers believed that the institutions should respect the patient’s decision when it involved antipsychotic drug treatments. Rubie Rogers was a 36-year old black woman who voluntarily institutionalized herself at the Boston State Hospital (BSH). Rogers suffered from hallucinations along with delusions and acquired a history of thought disorder such as violent behavior. Before Mills v. Rogers, a prior lawsuit was filed.

The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American teenagers accused of raping two White American women on a train in Alabama in 1931. These were landmark legal cases due to this incident dealing with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before suspects had even been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and hostile disruptive mobs. It is often regarded as a grave example of a miscarriage of justice in the U.S. legal system.

First, the human memory does not record all information like a video recorder. Mistaken eyewitness testimony is one of the major causes of wrong conviction. Events of crimes, will have so much stress or focus on a weapon, than the face of criminal (Wrongful Convictions , n.d.). The victim’s or eyewitness’s memory can be changed with an easy simple suggestion. Police procedure dealing with key witnesses by a “show up”. This is showing the suspect in a physical or a picture line up. The confidence of accuracy of identification and exhibited by the witness is a “crucial determinant of believability” by jurors (Furman, 2003). The best result of eyewitness testimony is taken identification immediately. The

Thanks for being part of the Deer Creek Cooperative Cotton Gin; it’s a great having you on the team. Last year cotton production was great and the quality of the cotton was awesome. This past year weather has not been as great, which has caused the cotton quality to be on a lower grade this year. Because of this disaster we have having to cut the advance in cotton to only two-cents per pound this season.

The Mills case not only extended the rights for mentally-retarded but also to all children with disabilities. The parents the students in the Mills case argued that denial of education violated the constitutional right to due process. The school said in their defense, to do so would be a great financial burden due to inadequate funding. The court held that equal protection was implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and through this provision a right did exist to attend public school. The procedural aspects gave students the right to due process of a fair hearing before they could be excluded or placed in alternative classes within the school system. Due to the Mills case, federally financial funding was made equally available to all students.

I believe that it´s the same offender in the Parkinson case and the Johnson case, which is making the offender a serial killer because he has killed 3 people and it has been over a period over 30 days. By looking at different serial killer typologies my firm belief is that this offender will fall into the lust serial killer typology. I concluded this by firstly looking if the crimes were act-focused kills or process kills, I concluded it was process kills because the offender had taken the time to abduct both Parkinson and Johnson and didn 't just kill them right away like an act-focused killer would do. With the offender being a process killer he could only be organized as well because process killers cannot be disorganized. The offender would either be a lust killer, power-control killer or a thrill killer. I concluded that the offender in this case would not be a thrill serial killer, since this kind of murderer gets off my seeing his victims suffering, which is the most important factor for this type of offender. In the Parkinson and Johnson murders there were no signs of torture on the victims bodies and therefore I do not believe that this offender would be a thrill serial killer.

It is not possible to know the full story of something if that person hasn’t seen footage, or wasn’t there when the event took place. A person would not be able to know what really happened if they hear the information from a second person. No one is ever going to tell someone the whole story, because they would be a little bias to the situation because they are explaining what they believe is true, but it might not be true to that other person. For example, the Alton sterling case that had happened in Baton Rouge, one cannot explain the truth on what happened in that situation because they would either tell the person the man was a huge threat and the police was doing their job, or they would say it was clearly racism and that is why they