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How Did M. Claude Screws Use Corruption In Law Enforcement

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Introduction
For as long as there have been Police Officers society has had to deal with misconduct and corruption in the institution. Through the nineteenth century, police officers became muscle employers used to violently end strikes. The rough police officiating and the racist Klu Klux Klan prompted the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The “anti-Klan bill”, intended to enforce both the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was the first federal law passed defining United States citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. The 1871 Civil Rights Act, “Section 1983 makes an officer liable for deliberately depriving any citizen of the United States of his or her Constitutional Rights.”(Prusinski, …show more content…

United States was decided by the Supreme Court in 1945. The case involved police brutality were the victim was killed. The federal government prosecuted the police officers after the State of Georgia refused to do so. M. Claude Screws was Sheriff of Baker County, Georgia. Screws knew the victim well, they had been in confrontation over a pistol seized from the victim Robert Hall. On January 29, 1943 Screws had two officers arrest Hall on charges of stealing a tire. The three men drove Hall to the town square and beat him with their fists and a two pound blackjack in front of the courthouse. They did it in plain sight, as residents watched from their homes. The State of Georgia failed to bring charges on the three men, Screws and the other two officers even though repeated suits by the federal government were placed, “a jury in Albany, Georgia, convicted all three defendants of violating Section 242, rejecting the officers’ claim that the beating had been justified in self-defense.”(Watford, 2014) Section 242 was too vague and could not be used to trial because the defendants argued they were not sure which rights it protected. There was a debate between the Supreme Court Justices if the vagueness of Section 242 would lead to a mistrial. The Court’s formation of Section 242 had introduced a “radical revolution” in the balance of power between the National Government and the States. Justice Frankfurter argued that, “because the defendants violated Georgia law by committing murder, this was a purely local crime-enforcement matter that had always been left to the domain of the States”(Watford, 2014) The federal government were now going to be able to make all lawless acts by any police officer a federal crime and Section 242 had survived. The survival of Section 242 meant that the federal government would have a part in fighting the well-known problem of police brutality to African Americans and other minorities, mainly in the South. It was

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