The movie I was assigned was, In the Heat of the Night starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. This film took place during the late 1960’s in Mississippi where Virgil Tibbs, a black Philadelphia homicide detective, is traveling. Upon his travel, he unintentionally gets involved with a murder investigation of a business man. He was first accused of committing this murder when a police officer was suspicious of him. After they determined his innocence’s, he was then asked to help solve the case because of his vast knowledge and experience dealing with homicide crimes. The process for only finding the killer was determined to be difficult, but even more so when Tibbs’s efforts are obstructed by the sheriff of the town, Gillespie. However, both …show more content…
The initial concept deals with the Fourth Amendment of search and seizure without probable cause. This first correlation is during the beginning of the movie, after the murder has already been committed with the body found, where Police Officer Sam Wood notices Tibbs waiting for the train to come. Officer Wood automatically becomes suspicious of Tibbs and begins to think he is the killer, since he is a black man in the south, so he ventures into the train station. The officer does not question Tibbs at all or even ask who he is, but orders him to stand with his hands and feet apart. Tibbs tries reaching for his jacket with his badge in it, but is denied when Officer Wood pulls his gun out. Then with gun in hand he begins to search Tibbs removing anything in his pockets. This type of activity definitely violates the fourth amendment, since there was no actual probable cause or evidence believing Tibbs was the one who committed the murder. The officer had no probable cause other than that it was a black man sitting alone in the train station in the middle of the night. The race of an individual does not qualify for a reason to arrest them despite what people think. Tibbs shortly after being brought in was declared innocent and was confirmed an experienced detective. Officer Wood then comprehended his mistakes with his actions, and …show more content…
With the way people reacted towards a black man being a cop, you knew not everyone was keen of them having the same jobs as a white man yet. One scene where you knew people didn’t want Tibbs around was when he was being chased by four or five white men. They didn’t want him to be involved with the murder case in their town and wanted to beat him up to make him leave. At one point in the movie those men had cornered Tibbs into a barn up against a wall. The men picked up various tools and chains from inside the barn and were getting ready to beat him since he was trapped. Tibbs began fighting back and protecting himself with the metal bar he picked up. Then Officer Gillespie calmly walks inside the barn, watches what is happening and tells the men to stop what they are doing since they have had their fun and to get out of there now. Of course, the men don’t just leave without saying a few things and warning the officer that he has to get rid of the black man or they will. Officer Gillespie, as one would guess, didn’t like the comments they made and being the kind of man he is, he stood up for Tibbs and told the men off and gave them a few punches. This shows the viewers, that people were still not okay with black men being treated like white men, and didn’t want them to get equal opportunities. It also shows the side where
Suicide can sometimes feel like the only way to pacify the pain. It is as if something is eating away parts of you slowly and intently and the only way to relieve the constant pain, is to die. Tiffany Hunter and Pierre L’errant are two very different characters with both equally unique yet queer personalities. Although Pierre and Tiffany are not the best of friends, their contrasting characteristics somehow complement each other. They both have similarities in their plans of suicide as well as differences that help them make the correct decision on where they want their life to go in future. Although they both made different decisions at the end, they assisted each other to settle on the right choice. Drew Hayden Taylor develops a theme of despondency and isolation from peers and loved ones in the novel “The Night Wanderer.”
Throughout the story Heat by Mike Lupica many themes can be pulled from the text. This story is about a boy named Michael who has many things he needs to overcome. This creates some challenges for him but in the end makes him stronger. The theme that I pulled from the story is: Be strong enough to overcome the hardships keeping you away from your dreams. Overall, the author is telling us to fight for what we love, Michael has to find a way to be able to play baseball, and Michael has to balance the rest of his life for the sake of his dream.
The book “A Night Divided,” is a great book. It is about a girl named Gerta and her family. She has an older brother Fritz, a brother Dominic, her father (papa) and her mother Frau Lowe. The Berlin Wall had just gone up after the Second World War separating East and West Germany, and her and her family live in the West. One night her brother Dominic and her father decide they need to get through the wall for work without guards noticing because the consequences could be deadly. Her brother and Father make it across but they cannot find a way to come back because the wall has been added on and is even more dangerous now. Gerta ends up not being able to talk to her father or brother for at least 4 years. One day Gerta was walking to school with her best friend Anna when she see’s her brother, Dominic on the other side of the wall and waves. She eventually ended up seeing her dad to but then she got caught by an officer by the name of Officer Muller. She ended up getting away from the Officer but she knew he would be watching her every move from now on. But everyday when she goes to school she see’s them on the platform and her dad is doing a dance that he always did for her as a kid when they were little. But, he continues doing the digging scene from the dance trying to give her a signal that he wants her to do something or he is going to do something. But if Gerta tries to cross that wall it could be deadly and we don’t know what would happen.
On the night of October 3rd, 1974 at approximately 10:45 p.m. Edward Garner was shot by Officer Hymon in an attempt to stop him from escaping a crime scene. Garner died on the operating table due to the gunshot wound on the back of his head. His crime was burglary and he was found with a mere ten dollars and a purse. The case was argued on October 30th, 1984 and a decision was made on March 27th, 1985. The father of Edward Garner believed his son’s constitutional rights were violated by the defendants Officer Hymon, the Police Department, and the Mayor of the city of Memphis. With a 6-3 decision, the Justices’ decided that Officer Hymon was acting justly under the fourth amendment that states that deadly force is constitutional as long as it is “reasonable”. I believe Officer Hymon was acting in good faith and simply fulfilling his duty to protect the public and stop criminals from escaping punishment.
3. How is the racial issue – a main theme of this book – clearly introduces in Chapter 1?
The novel “Night” is a vivid representation of a man’s loss of faith from the beginning to the end of the catastrophic era in which this book takes place. As a young boy Elie’s inquisitive mind directed him to the synagogue where he would study the Kabbalah’s revelations and mysteries. Here is where “Moishe the beadle,” a friend to Elie, would sit with him in the synagogue and they would talk for hours about the intriguing secrets of Jewish mysticism. One important piece of advice that Moishe told Elie was, “There are a thousand and one gates allowing entry into the orchard of the mystical truth.” This simply meant he would need to pursue these answers on his own. However, Elie believed Moishe would help him bind his questions and answers as well, into one. These meetings were interrupted when Moishe was extracted from the Sighet where he experienced malice.
or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The argument here is that skin color correlates to the probability that the person is involved in criminal activity, and this violates the fourth amendment in that skin color does not qualify as a “probable cause.”
Procedure: Garner’s father brought the action the police officer took in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, looking for violations that were made of Garner’s constitutional rights. The complaint was alleged that the shooting of Garner violated the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. After a three day trial, the District Court entered judgement for all defendants. It dismissed the claims against the defendants as being the mayor and Officer Hymon and the Police Department as being the director for lack of evidence. Hymon’s actions were then concluded to being constitutional by being under the Tennessee statute. The Court of Appeals affirmed with regard to Hymon, finding that he had acted accordingly to the Tennessee statute. The Court of Appeals then reversed and remanded. It reasoned that the killing of a fleeing suspect is “seizure” under the Fourth Amendment, and is therefore constitutional only if actions are reasonable. In this case the actions were found not to be reasonable. Officers cannot use deadly force unless they have probable cause that the suspect poses a serious threat to the officer or has committed a felony.
After reading, Breaking Night by Liz Murray, it left me in all, in a swing of emotions but thrilled in the end. To listen to Liz struggle and pain that she endured as a child and being homeless during her teenage years made me look a life in a whole different way and made me appreciate my life so much more. I could never imagine going through the obstacles Liz was thrown with, such as, drug addictive parents with AIDS, the pressure of taking care of everyone but herself, juggling school and more. It made me realize that my life isn’t so bad, that there are people going through worse situations than I am and to appreciate the little things that I do have.
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in Staten Island, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Walter Scott in North Charleston and, most recently, Freddie Gray in Baltimore have dominated the headlines this entire school year. These men and their stories provide the basis for claims of racially discriminatory treatment of African Americans at the hands of the police. It is true that each of the stories surrounding these men is different, but the one unifying theme is that police around the country are interpreting our Constitutional rights in a way that is insufficient to protect African Americans and the population in general. This paper will explore one Constitutional right— the 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizures--and examine how one Supreme Court decision that narrowed the scope of the 4th Amendment and unintentionally created a mechanism by which the rights of citizens could be unfairly impeded by police.
According to the Center for Constitutional Rights report, stop and frisk is “the practice by which a police officer initiates a stop of an individual…allegedly based on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity” (2012). This practice dates back to the Terry vs. Ohio case in 1968 where the police “are authorized to stop a person…without a warrant” if the law enforcement officials have a reasonable suspicion that an individual is about to commit a crime (“Terry vs. Ohio,” 1968). Mcfadden, a detective, was patrolling his downtown beat when he discovered Terry as well as his two male accomplices roaming the same area more than 24 times, while stopping to look in the same store window. Their actions stimulated suspicion and Mcfadden approached the men and identified himself as a policeman. Mcfadden frisked Terry and found a revolver in his overcoat pocket and was then charged with carrying a concealed weapon (“Terry vs. Ohio,” 1968). The Supreme Court’s decision though, rejected the argument that the stop and frisk of Terry did not trigger the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Court
A major flaw that Alexander points out of the current justice system is how officers use the new regulation ruled in Terry v. Ohio that “when a police officer observes unusual conduct by someone the officer reasonably believes to be dangerous and engaged in criminal activity, the officer ‘is entitled for the protection of himself and others in the area’ to conduct a limited search ‘to discover weapons that might be used against the officer’” (Alexander, 63). What this basically says about our justice system is that if someone has a ‘bad feeling’ about someone, they can frisk them for little to no reason. This is something we see very often in the news, especially as of lately, due to the brutality that has become more evident within the police force. It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to be any individual that is constantly portrayed in the media and news as a criminal, but this is what Alexander points out several times. One of my favorite lines from the book, something that I sympathize with because I do listen to rap and hip hop written by African
Before Night Falls tells the story of Reinaldo Arenas, a Cuban writer who suffered for many years and dealt with tragic circumstances all throughout his life. Living during Fidel Castro’s harsh regime as a homosexual male led to several years of torture, for he was imprisoned, but ultimately set free. Additionally, his writing was bold and went against everything that Castro represented, and he took extreme risks to get his work published in other countries. The world heard the prolific voice of Arenas, while the Cuban government, his fellow writers, and even his lovers tried to silence him. Arenas was an extremely important figure in Latin culture. This is not simply because his work was profound; his life gives us a deeper look at the difficulties of struggling with homosexuality, masculinity, and finding freedom. He embodies resilience, charisma, determination, and at the same time fragility, weakness and pain.
The racist police officer had it set in his mind that Rubin Carter was a menace to society and he was going to do everything in his power to take him down. These things that Rubin was saying even made the cop want to put him away more. So the first chance he could get something on him he would. So it happened and the cop tried to pin a murder on Rubin Carter and another black man that was with him at the time of the murder. There was an instance that we saw an instance of stereotyping by other cops in that district. When they were out looking for the murderers they were told to look for two black men in a white car. When Carter was approached in his car he was told by
During the 60’s, having less melanin in the Southern states gave you endless privileges; a higher quality of education, worthier water fountains, washrooms provided with soap and hand towels, guaranteed seats on the bus, admittance to numerous restaurants and jobs. The neglect and discrimination the black community received before the Civil Rights Movement was inhumane. In The Heat Of The Night by John Ball is a novel that thoroughly captures the atmosphere of the southern states as they were caught in between of the Civil Rights Movement.