Monster Steve Criminal Case

Amy Bach, author of Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court describes the flaws of the criminal justice system. She elaborates from research and her own personal experience as a lawyer. In the final chapter, Show Trial, Bach discusses a story about the wrongful conviction of two innocent boys. Thomas Breen helped convict Michael and Paul, two seventeen year old teens, one of them with special needs. They were sentenced to 200 and 400 years in prison (193). Sam Adam, Michael’s defense attorney, was not able to let the case go, and constantly reminded Breen of the case. Shockingly, after nineteen years, Breen decided to take another look at the cause, because he questioned their guilt (219). Although the competitive nature of prosecutors

Angry! Hostile!” This causes him to not listen to the other jurors opinions and block out any idea of the defendant being innocent. His prejudice is further understood when he says “this kid is guilty. He’s got to burn. We’re letting him slip through our fingers here.” Juror #3 is only able to see the young boy on trial as a symbol of his own son and is therefore unable to look past his own anger towards his son and see the case for what it really is. It is only through the help of juror #8 does juror #3 finally let go of his personal prejudice and sees the truth about the case and changes his vote to not guilty.

Jury trials play a centrally important role in the law, therefore it is crucial for the juror to stay neutral in making decision. However, several research shows that stereotyping is one of the most debatable issues related to juries’ decision (Bornstein & Greene, 2011). In refer to Bornstein and Greene (2011), the stereotype that females and males generally labelled in specific crime be likely to be true in the largest sense. Thus, the significance of this study is to examine the effect of stereotype in defendant gender and crime types on the juror decision.

Because Briggs has such an unsteady and finicky case, his only option is to attack the witnesses’ character, their credibility, and to attack the lawyer for the State. Lawyers always have the chance to introduce to the jury their case. The way they begin showcases how the lawyer wants the jury to view their case. At the beginning of Briggs' first statements, he shows the jury how, “Miss Petrocelli, representing the state, has presented this case in very broad and grandiose terms. But you will soon see that her key witnesses are among the most self-serving, heartless people imaginable” (27). Briggs hopes that the jury will discredit everything Petrocelli presents. His case relies on the jury abandoning Petrocelli’s reasoning. However, instead of attacking her evidence, he condemns her character and the character of her informants and testifiers.

From the article “Former Pediatrician Appeals ‘Waterboarding’ Conviction”, Melvin Morse, a former pediatrician, did not get a fair trial. Similarly, Tom Robinson from To Kill a Mockingbird also did not get a fair trial. A fair trial is a courtroom with an unprejudiced jury that listens to both sides of the situation without being biased. It’s a place where everyone is treated equally despite their looks and race. However, the prejudicial jury knew Tom Robinson is guilty before the trial begins. The jury judge Tom Robinson base on his looks and skin color instead of judging him on his statements. If a white person places himself in Tom Robinson’s shoes, they will realize Robinson is just like them, and he should not be treated like an animal.

Keeping this in mind, we need to come to an understanding that being in a jury carries a lot of weight because a decision we make will bring forth life changing consequences. The prosecutors in this case believe that Katherine was beaten by Michael in an act of malice. In an effort to support their case, they have presented evidence that

In today’s society, there a lot of young men put in bad situations. In the book Monster there are several young men who has committed a crime. Steve Harmon are one of those young men who is facing life in prison on trial due to a robbery and led to a shooting. Steve was not responsible for Mr. Nesbitt’s death, because he said wasn’t there. Also, he didn’t give a signal and he didn’t kill Mr. Nesbitt.

Every second, there are millions of lawsuits taking places in the United States. There is a question that always needed to be asked: is it a fair trial? The answer depends on all kinds of variables, such as race, education, poverty, age, gender and so on. A jury selection always needs to consider and assess different variables. In addition, in a jury selection, the lawyers and the judge need to eliminate different bias in order to proceed with a fair trail. In the legal system, a jury selection is also referred as voir dire process, which originally translated to an oath taken by jurors to tell the truth. According to the Sixth Amendment, the Constitution provides the defendant in a criminal trial with the right to “ an impartial jury” (Benforado

Cases like the O.J Simpson murder case prove that the U.S. justice system is flawed. There was a racial divide in the jury that made it near impossible for the prosecution to win even before the case started. The Defence tried to distract the jury from the evidence by focussing their attention on racism. In addition, the so called entertainment of the case became more important than the murder of a helpless wife and a person who did the wrong thing and was punished anyway. This case and many other cases like the Casey Anthony and Amanda Knox validate that the American justice system is bias and glitched.

In society there are people who commit crimes or someone could just be the lookout. In the book Monster Steve has been accused of being the lookout for a robbery and murder of Mr. Nesbitt. Steve then goes to trial and fights for his life. Steve was not the lookout for the robbery nor was he responsible for Mr. Nesbitt’s death.

The vote has just changed from five to seven in favor of guilty to nine to three in favor of acquittal, this raises anger in Juror ten and he starts yelling “‘You know, they get drunk… oh they’re very big drinkers, all of ‘em and bang, someone’s lying in the gutter. Oh, nobody’s blaming them for it. That’s how they’re! By nature! You know what I mean? Violent!”’ Juror#10 (246). Juror ten reaches his verdict based on stereotypes and prejudice.All of his deliberations are based on the fact that people like the defendant are liars and criminals. Even though it says in The Trial Juror’s Handbook, that the juror needs to be fair and impartial, Juror ten is not following that. He doesn't want to look at the facts. He is categorizing the defendant into all the same category as people like him or “them”. Juror ten is the archetype of biased Juror, which is not an ideal Juror for the

In the text Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose, the jury began as uncooperative and evolved into a more agreeable jury by the end. The jury started in a state of contradiction and an inability to cooperate. Most jurors only cared to listen to themselves and just wanted to bully other jurors into agreeing with them. They were in a hurry to get out of the deliberation room and just wanted to be done with this case as we can see when Seven said to Ten that “this better be fast” (Rose 88). He just wanted to leave so he could watch a theatrical performance. This proves how little this case meant to him and several other jurors. You can see how they disregard evidence for stereotypes when Ten explained the defendant's supposed lie by saying that the jury “know[s] how [these] people lie… [and] don’t need any real big reason to kill someone either” (Rose 106). He believed that just because the kid was raised in a slum, he would lie and kill ruthlessly. He didn’t believe anyone raised in the slums was above murder and lying. The early jury was a disaster and a disgrace to the justice system, but they slowly began to redeem themselves.

If his father doesn’t have faith in him he thinks the jury definitely won't. Moving on within this story it stated, “you innocent? Yes,- well they locking somebody up innocent or not” This illustrates that other people are putting ideas into his head, like a mental peer pressure causing him to be discouraged. From the book Monster, the main character Steve is

It is clear at this point that at least one of the jurors held a predisposed opinion of the defendant simply because of his socioeconomic background. In this case, a juror’s negative opinion drives him to ignore facts and logic presented to him. He appears to dehumanize people who live in the slums, and clearly expects the boy to be a murderer because of this. He gradually becomes an embodiment of racism and hate, at one point going on a rant and comparing people from the slums to animals. Only after he is presented irrefutable evidence, and is coaxed by other jurors, does Juror 10 change his vote to not guilty.

Funny I didn’t think of it before. I guess you try to forget those things. Anyone who’s ever used a switch knife would never have stabbed downward. You don’t handle a switch knife that was. You us it underhand,” (Rose, 25). This helps convince some of the other jurors to change their vote to not guilty. His contribution of information made the jurors think more about their vote. His character grows from being meek to being an important factor in the result of the case being a fair trial. There is still other prejudice that made one juror still vote guilty.