Deshaney V. Supreme Court Case Study

Laws are enforced to provide our society with safety, boundaries, protection of rights, and overall justice. The United States Constitution and Bill of Rights were established years ago to reduce the tensions and conflicts of our newly founded nation. It sought out to accomplish this by providing justice through an equal voice for all citizens. However, this equal voice for justice more often times than not is squandered and diminished. Things such as race, religion, and culture often times blur the lines of the law and fair outcomes in a court. Individuals feel that their beliefs are more important than the protection of rights and the deliverance of law or the law itself cannot go outside of its limitations to provide justice. This is apparent in the court cases of Marbury v Madison, Plessy v Ferguson, and the book To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. These cases clearly exemplify that the law does not always provide justice, although it endeavors to do so.

“I just knew the phone would ring some day and Joshua would be dead,” stated social worker Ann Kemmeter regarding Joshua DeShaney and the ongoing abuse he endured from his father. Joshua’s father brutally and repeatedly abused his four-year-old son Joshua (Wichenbach). The State of Wisconsin was aware of this abuse, but still did nothing to intervene and stop the mistreatment of this child (Wichenbach). The State’s inaction led to the Supreme Court case DeShaney v. Winnebago Department of Social Services, in which Joshua’s mother, Melody, sued the Winnebago Department of Social Services claiming, “the social worker deprived Joshua of his liberty without due process of law” (Alexander). In order to fully understand the DeShaney case, one must conduct thorough background research, delve into the court case itself, and analyze the impact the case has yet today.

A state that undertakes custody of a child is declaring that it can do a better job providing protection. This system is a powerful agent of support, providing positive nurturing environments that enable a child to reach his or her potential. Nonetheless, when children suffer additional abuse in the system, this government intervention should be questioned.

United States v. Jones is one of many cases that the Supreme Court has ruled on. The case was one of the few cases that has a unanimous ruling. Evening though there was a unanimous rule there was still a debate on reasoning behind the ruling. The debate is between privacy given to a person’s property and a person’s expectation of privacy. United States v. Jones deals with a global positioning device attached to Jones’ car by officers without a warrant. The Supreme Court ruled that the attachment of the global positioning device was a violation of the fourth amendment. Justice Scalia gave the plurality opinion and their reasoning was that the intrusion on the car made it a violation of the fourth amendment.

Throughout an 18-hour period on October 26, 1989, the appellant Marc Creighton, a companion Frank Caddedu and the deceased Kimberley Ann Martin consumed a large quantity of alcohol and cocaine. The afternoon of the following day on October 27, the three planned to share a quantity of cocaine at Ms. Martin’s apartment. The evidence and later testimony indicates that all of the members involved are experienced cocaine users. The appellant acquired 3.5 grams (“an eight-ball”) of cocaine; he did not try to determine the quality or potency of the cocaine before injecting it into himself and Frank Caddedu.

The Dusky V. United States was a case that began to question the competency of people that have committed crimes. On September 10, 1958 Milton R. Dusky was charged with unlawfully transporting, a 15 year old, across state lines from Missouri to Kansas with two other young boys, Leonard Dischart, age 13, and Richard H. Nixon, age 16. The young girl had known Nixon before she knew Dischart; therefore, she accepted the invitation when the two boys and the defendant asked if she needed a ride to the drug store. Dusky and the boys, after leaving the drug store, had decided to go for drinks, that Dusky had provided. Intoxicated, they debated whether or not they should have sexual relations with the young girl with “the type of girl she is.” Returning

In the case, DeShaney v. Winnebago County Social Services, the mother of an abused child, Ms. DeShaney (Petitioner) sued Winnebago County Department of Social Services and several of their employees, (Defendant) for failing to protect the child from physical abuse by his father. In 1984, four-year-old Joshua DeShaney became comatose and then severely retarded due to traumatic head injuries inflicted by his father who beat him over an extended period of time. The county department of social services received complaints that the boy was being abused by his father and took various steps to protect him. They did not, however, remove Joshua from his father's custody. Ms. DeShaney subsequently sued the Winnebago County Department of Social Services,

The purpose of this research is to rationalize an amendment to the Constitution of the United States forcing Supreme Court Justices into a medical review to determine if the Justices are physically and mentally able to continue to serve their tenure. The focus is to create a half way point between two opinions in the very controversial subject of the Supreme Court Justices tenure. As the Judicial Branch becomes more active, citizens have questioned the rationale of justices serving for life, while others maintain that there is no need for change. The middle ground purposed is the establishment of a medical review of the justices and the hard part is establishing when they are medically unfit to serve. Considering the Constitutional purpose

The landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson is a Constitutional case in which it had to be decided who the constitution meant when it said "all men are created equal." This case is very important to our constitution and to the people being governed by the constitution because it brought up issues that hadn't been discussed in the U.S before. This case shows the degree of federalism and how much the government paid attention to it. The amendments in the constitution do not apply to a simple race or ethnicity. Throughout history laws have been made and destroyed at the cost of colored people, in the Plessy v. Ferguson case it is shown that due to the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments all citizens have equal protection under the law. Plessy was denied his right, as well as other colored people because they belonged to different bathrooms, they belonged to different train cars and they belonged to different water fountains at this time in history, but Plessy'

Raymond DeSABATO, Jr., and Robin DeSabato, Plaintiffs,v.UNITED STATES of America, Defendant.Civil Action No. 06–40151–FDS.March 6, 2008.

John Coy was convicted at trial in the Iowa Supreme Court on July 13, 1988 after being

Throughout the United States history, there have been many decisions that could have both made and broken the establishment as we know it. One such case that hinges on that statement would be that of the United States V. Jones. The Government is your friend, if you haven’t done anything wrong then you have nothing to hide. Respondent Jones committed a crime that is a known fact. The police had a warrant and they acted on that warrant, although it had expired which was there own fault, they attached a GPS onto his wife’s car because he was smart when using his own car and his own cell phone. Talking in code and only driving from his house to work in his personal car.

Segregation violates the Equal Protection Clause because according to the 14th Amendment “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”. States do not have the power to segregate communities, or individuals because of their color which is why cases like Brown v. Board of Education, Plessy v. Ferguson, and many more went to the United States Supreme Court. Brown v. Board of Education and Plessy v. Ferguson cases are relatable because they were both deprived of their 14th Amendment rights. With Brown v. Board of Education, there was racial discrimination in the public education system. With Plessy v. Ferguson, Louisiana created their own law which made it so that white

The impacts of DeShaney v. Winnebago are used in cases of psychiatric patients and many other child abuse cases. In the context of psychiatric patients, two Supreme Court cases lead the legal precedent on how psychiatric cases are followed through: The case of Youngberg v. Romeo, which held that the government takes on affirmative duties in involuntarily confining a mental health patient, and also the case of DeShaney v. Winnebago, which lessened the range of affirmative duties given to the government (Hagan 735). Although DeShaney v. Winnebago protected social workers, it also created a more difficult space for child abuse cases to actually be carried out. For example, Jessica Gonzales tried to steer around the DeShaney v. Winnebago case when her husband murdered their three kids despite Jessica’s multiple reports of his

Facts: The Petitioner Charles Katz used a public phone booth in order to place phone calls to transmit and receive gambling information and wagers across multiple state lines, which is a violation of federal law. After extended FBI surveillance of the petitioner for illegal gambling activities, a listening device was placed on the outside of the public telephone booth and recorded the petitioner’s side of the phone conversations. The recordings were submitted into evidence despite the petitioner objecting, citing fourth amendment violations, which assisted in his conviction. The conviction was brought against the Ninth Circuit of Appeals, and the conviction was affirmed deeming the external listening