Leo Frank Trial Essay

In 1920, Oscar Micheaux directed the silent film Within Our Gates which conducts an in-depth examination of race relations and discrimination within the United States. One of the outcomes of the film is a blatant failure of justice resulting in the lynching of an African American couple, The Landrys. Seemingly, time has not altered the inherent absence of justice concerning the treatment of Black men and women in situations where criminal activity is suspected, legitimately or otherwise. Evidence is found with the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and many other Black victims who died at the hands of police who are tasked with upholding justice and fail to do so. However, what was the popular sentiment toward failure within the legal system between 1920 and 2015? While not representative of this entire time span, in 1962, Robert Mulligan’s film To Kill a Mockingbird focuses on race relations and an African American male wrongly accused of rape who is ultimately killed in a suspicious police shooting. Within Our Gates and To Kill a Mockingbird each offer a presentation of a gross miscarriage of justice that is obvious to the omniscient viewer, but the reaction the films garner from the audience varies from outrage to resignation due to the implementation (or lack thereof) of a visual stimuli, telling of the time period in which the films were produced.

The map above charts the three routes driven by Frank during the period of his Guggenheim fellowship.

The theme of this paper is, the discrimination in courtrooms. The reason for this theme is because, once you listen to the 3rd stanza of this poem you can tell what it is and how the system is in operation to imprison African Americans, and it will never change. The paper will focus on these few topics, a corrupt law system, bias judges and perjury from peers. As a matter of fact, in the poem “Mystery of Iniquity” the writer Lauryn Hill examines discrimination in courtrooms to illustrate, a corrupt law system, bias judges, and perjury.

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

The O.J. Simpson trial was one of the most distinguishable cases in American history. Many Americans tuned into the bronco chase on June 17, 1994 when Simpson was the main suspect for the murder of Nicole Brown-Simpson, O.J.’s ex-wife, and her friend Ronald Goldman, which occurred a few days prior (Lamb, 1994). O.J. Simpson was the murder suspect for the double homicide of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. He was a retired professional football player who resided in California. He was one of the black entertainers of the 1990’s along with Oprah, Michael, Wesley, and Spike. Through these entertainers, it was shown that there is opportunity to succeed for black men and woman in society (White, 1995). The number one question on everyone’s mind was not if O.J. was innocent or guilty, but whether he would be found guilty or just walk away. Other questions on the mind of American’s was did he actually commit the crime?

Since the beginning of American history, the media have played a massive role in how people perceive certain viewpoints. The media comes in all different shapes, whether it is propaganda, a commercial, advertisements and even newspaper articles can influence and individual minds. It can be even used to change one’s opinion on the way they may think of a particular race. Still today the media influences our mind, however many believe due to media bias and racial profiling will affect how “fair” their trial will be. In fact in today’s society, citizens in the United States are unable to gain a fair trial due to racial profiling, and bias in the media.

A large contributor to the bias in the trial was the public’s bias. Before the trial began it was

Modern forms of this include racial profiling, discrimination, and assumption of guilt. The author of the book, Brian Stevenson, discusses in the book numerous instances in which he himself was the victim of racial profiling and discrimination. He was racially profiled by cops while parked in front of his own house. They pointed a gun at his head and illegally searched his car, and then told him that he was lucky because they were going to let him go (Stevenson 39-42). Later in the book, during Walter’s trial, he, along with all the other black people who are there to support Walter McMillan, is discriminated against by courtroom officials. They were refusing to let any black people in to the courtroom. The guard did not know that Stevenson was the attorney, and so he refused to let him in until Stevenson told the guard who he was (Stevenson 174). Stevenson is not alone in these types of experiences. Every single one of his clients, and their families, are the victims of racism and

In 1915, an unjust tragedy occurred. Leo M. Frank was lynched because he was thought to be guilty for the murder of 14-year-old Mary Phagan. However, was he actually guilty of the crime he was convicted for? More or less, Leo Frank was a victim of press influencing public opinion, the need for Hugh Dorsey (the prosecutor) to have a successful case, and racial prejudice of the time. Contrary to public opinion, Leo Frank was not guilty for murdering Mary Phagan.

the prisoners were lucky enough to escape the being lynched when they were moved into Scottsboro. In this trial, nine young, black boys were charged with the rape of two white girls while on a train. This case was a major source of controversy in the 1930’s. “Despite testimony by doctors who had examined the women that no rape had occurred, the all- white jury convicted the nine, and all but the youngest, who was 12 years old were sentenced to death” (“Scottsboro”). The boys’ lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, did not even get assigned to the case until the first day of the trial. “If he could show a jury that these nine boys were innocent, as the record indicated, the jury would surely free them. To Leibowitz, that was simple!” (Chalmers 35). However, it was not that simple. Many white citizens would not change their minds about

The author of this article is Cornelia Grumman won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 and found the organization the First Five Years Fund where she advocated for stronger federal policies. The audience she could be targeting would be the government to create stricter guidelines when imposing capital punishment. The purpose of this article is to give awareness of how race can create bias factors in the justice system. It has been commonly seen

At the beginning of the century, Americans were disappointed with the outcome of the European war. This resulted them to go against all things foreign, which included racial political ideas and immigrants. The country had to face many decisions made by communists, which created the Red Scare. The Red Scare was a spread of the fear of communism. One of the most important cases involving the Red Scare was the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were Italian, atheists, conscientious objectors, and radicals, were both accused of the murder of a paymaster and his guard at South Braintree, Massachusetts. They were both holding revolvers and told lies to the judge and court, but the flaws in evidence proved they were not guilty. “Many critics believed that the accused had been found guilty of radicalism rather than murder- that they were martyrs in the ‘class struggle’” (Race and Ethnicity Packet). Their conviction illustrated the unfairness of the trial based on the beliefs and race. The American jury and judge for the trial was

The New York Times bestseller book titled Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case examines the O.J. Simpson criminal trial of the mid-1990s. The author, Alan M. Dershowitz, relates the Simpson case to the broad functions and perspectives of the American criminal justice system as a whole. A Harvard law school teacher at the time and one of the most renowned legal minds in the country, Dershowitz served as one of O.J. Simpson’s twelve defense lawyers during the trial. Dershowitz utilizes the Simpson case to illustrate how today’s criminal justice system operates and relates it to the misperceptions of the public. Many outside spectators of the case firmly believed that Simpson committed the

To some historians, the Sacco and Vanzetti verdict represents one of the darkest moments for American democracy. Today, it is clear that Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and convicted because of who they were- Non-Protestant, Non-Fundamentalists who believed in something different from the majority of the people.

Over the course of the semester, I have learned about numerous aspects of Mass media and crime. We have broken these aspects into nine major topics based on what they focused on. The nine major topics includes theorizing media and crime, construction of crime, media and moral panics, media construction of children, media misogyny, police, offenders, and victims in the media, crime and prison films, role of the internet in crime and crime and surveillance culture. The topics that I found most interesting to me would be media and moral panic, construction of crime news and children and police, offender and victims in the media. I chose these four topics, because they play a role to the overall information that I have been paying close attention to in regards to how the media presents the information and how our Criminal Justice system addresses the concerns in the media. For our final exam, were asked to pick and discuss a topic that interested us, because of my curiosity of those four major topics I decided to pick a historical case that touched basis with all four topic areas. My topic being the historical case of Brown v. Board of Education. My goal of this essay is to give you the back story of the case, explain why I chose this case, discuss how the case is considered newsworthy and how it links to broader social structures.