McCleskey v. Kemp

With this said, as citizens, are we still equal? The answer to that question is “no”. The world is living in Orwellian times where citizens are equal, but some citizens are more equal than others. While some agree, there are many groups that are pushing for reform and equality, such as Take Back Our Republic, By The People, and Common Cause: Holding Power Accountable. Now that the facts are said, we must ask “how did we become so unequal?” Over time, big corporations, racial groups, and corruption in government have been advocating inequality for the minority. Some people are filled with wrong ideas and beliefs that attack those in the minority group, especially people of color. Franklin said, “almost from the beginning of their national history, people have been relentless, at times ruthless, in their pursuit of equality.”

Usually, people who commit homicide are convicted and sentenced to many years of incarceration but almost all police that has murdered are never found guilty. For example, Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old white police officer, killed Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old, after shooting at least 10 rounds at him. Just imagine losing your child just two days before their first day of college over cigarillos. Then a mere three months later Wilson was found not guilty even with the amount of compelling evidence against him proving that police have always, subjected minorities to apparently discriminatory treatment and have physically abused minorities while using racial epithets(Collins, Cynthia 2). Even though Michael deserved some punishment Wilson had no right to take it to the extreme and shoot a

Even before watching the video, “Race on Trial” I believed that there was racial bias in the justice system and all this video did was reaffirm that. The fact that these two cases were so similar it is no surprise that the judge jumped to race as the only factor that separated their sentences. Even though there are federal sentencing guidelines put in place to prevent/reduce sentencing disparities it still occurs and many have done in depth research on it. In “The Relationship between Race, Ethnicity, and Sentencing Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis of Sentencing Research” they compared sentencing outcomes of African Americans to whites and saw that 66% of the sentencing outcomes that they studied showed that African Americans had a higher sentencing

The study conducted by MSU examined jury selection as well as the decisions made by said juries. “The MSU study of capital charging and sentencing found that those who kill whites are more likely to get the death penalty than those who kill blacks. The MSU study found that a defendant is 2.6 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white.” (ACLU). Following the study, North Carolina passed a law entitled the “Racial Justice Act”. This piece of legislature made it possible for inmates to appeal their sentences due to supposed racial profiling. Since the passing of the law last year, there have been 4 successful appeals. The law doesn’t guarantee that the whole sentence will be reversed; however, it puts in place a system that allows for flaws in the length/severity of the sentence to be readdressed. The passing of the law as well as the MSU study prove that although there are more minorities being charged for crimes, the charges are of ill-willed intentions.

When Dred Scott v. Sandford was decided in 1857, it made an enormous impact on the United States. It riled up both pro- and anti-slavery Americans. It angered many Americans in an extreme example of judicial activism. Some say it made the Civil War inevitable. By the time the dust had settled and the 13th and 14th Amendments reversed the Court’s decision, Dred Scott could be considered one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. And yet, although the case was egregiously wrong, it still can be considered a “great case”.

1972 - In Furman v. Georgia the Court rules that all existing death penalty laws violate the Constitution. The Court cited "arbitrariness" and racial imbalances in the application of death sentences. As a consequence, many states rewrite their death penalty laws.

“The power to tax involves the power to destroy.” This is what the Supreme Court determined in the landmark decision of McCulloch v. Maryland. Presently churches or religious establishments are tax exempt. Many people vividly oppose the government’s stance on the issue, but though the government does many things wrong, as many will tell you, this is not one one of them.

The Supreme Court is not infallible. At the same time, the Supreme Court can do no wrong. Here is the social paradox that is the Supreme Court. They are supposed to declare an act constitutional or not, but that is fundamentally flawed based on the cultural atmosphere at the time. Each justice is a victim of society, just as every person in the United States and the world is, therefore they are subject to the whims of their culture and how they grew up, leading to some less than optimal results. The Supreme Court is intended to work as a moral compass for the nation, deciding what is good and bad, but society can be fundamentally flawed, as illustrated by many cases brought to the Supreme Court. The case of Dred Scott v. Sandford is a clear

During this era, the South was mainly filled with a white population, so African Americans were not thought of as equals. This view was carried out through the court system as well. For this reason, George Stinney’s conviction and execution was surrounded by racial injustice. The black population of Clarendon county never forgot about George Stinney’s case. On the other hand, the white population mostly never knew the case even existed (Hutchins).

To rebut petitioner McCleskey's alibi defense at his 1978 Georgia trial for murder and a related crime, the State called Officer Evans, the occupant of the jail cell next to McCleskey's, who testified that McCleskey had admitted and boasted about the killing. On the basis of this and other evidence supporting McCleskey's guilt, the jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. After the State Supreme Court affirmed, he filed an unsuccessful petition for state habeas corpus relief, alleging, inter alia, that his statements to Evans were elicited in a situation created by the State to induce him to make incriminating statements without the assistance of counsel in violation of Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201 . He then filed his first

In many cases law enforcement likes to do justify many of their wrongdoings on the hunch that he was “just doing his job” in the instance of killing or brutality injuring an innocent man or child for being somewhere at the wrong place or time can be validated with a simple statement (Kiely 209). Similar to when Paul was once telling Quinn “It’s harder to be a cop here now than it used to be” (Kiely 167). Nostalgically thinking back on time when Whites made up majority of the town's population and minorities precisely made up a unreasonably small fraction less than half thus implying that because there are more minority races particularly African Americans taking occupancy, the town has become more prone to violence, stealing, and other crimes . According to The New York Times, “In 15 high-profile cases involving deaths of Blacks, one officer faces prison time” (Lee). Implicating that only one officer out of 15 cases was convicted for the crime he committed and the others were given a leave of absences from duty. For the families of those who didn’t receive rightful justice they were granted payouts to pay for funeral expenses leaving the officer able to walk away scot free acquitted of all charges. However, thankfully the family does walk away with a hefty amount of money but, at the expense of their love one’s life. Racism within law enforcement takes so many innocent lives each year on account of just because of race alone regardless if a crime was committed or not. However, society as well is a major component revolved around

Assume that you are the judge on appeal – how would you rule? Apply the appropriate legal principles. Refer to Clark v. Aukerman (Links to an external site.) as precedent.

To look closely at many of the mechanisms in American society is to observe the contradiction between constitutional equality and equality in practice. Several of these contradictions exist in the realm of racial equality. For example, Black s often get dealt an unfair hand in the criminal justice system. In The Real War on Crime, Steven Donziger explains,

Society has gotten a lot better than it was but not everyone is still treated equally unfortunately. For example modern day people still think caucasians are superior to all other

“In a monumental 1972 decision by the US Supreme Court, all but a few death penalty statutes in the United States were declared unconstitutional” (Radelet & Borg, 2000,