The Court Case : Williams Vs. United States

Laws are enforced to provide our society with safety, boundaries, protection of rights, and overall justice. The United States Constitution and Bill of Rights were established years ago to reduce the tensions and conflicts of our newly founded nation. It sought out to accomplish this by providing justice through an equal voice for all citizens. However, this equal voice for justice more often times than not is squandered and diminished. Things such as race, religion, and culture often times blur the lines of the law and fair outcomes in a court. Individuals feel that their beliefs are more important than the protection of rights and the deliverance of law or the law itself cannot go outside of its limitations to provide justice. This is apparent in the court cases of Marbury v Madison, Plessy v Ferguson, and the book To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. These cases clearly exemplify that the law does not always provide justice, although it endeavors to do so.

In the case of Robert Tolan and Marian Tolan vs. Jeffrey Wayne Cotton, I will be discussing what interest me about this case. I will also deliberating on the liability and criminal liability of this case. The Tolan vs. Cotton case interests me because the United States have so many police that are brutalizing citizens. In some cases the police officers are getting away with it. After reading, reviewing, and studying this case I have learn a lot about the criminal system and laws that men and women should obey. I will explain how the nine judges on the Supreme courts all came to a verdict against the police officer Jeffrey Cotton after he shot an innocent suspect. This people

his testimony, he was making direct eye contact with the lawyer and was not stuttering

The case of Kent V. United States is a historical case in the United States. The Kent case helped lead the way in the development of a list of eight criteria and principles. This creation of these criteria and principle has helped protect the offender and public for more than forty-five years. Which as a reason has forever changed the process of waving a juvenile into the adult system (Find Law, 2014).

During the 1970’s, Connecticut was a very prosperous state with growing numbers of minorities. Many of these minorities would tend to live in the same neighborhoods which would lead to other races, like whites, leaving an area and moving to a new area away from these minorities. We learned about white flight in The Children in Room E4, but this has been relevant for many decades. These whites may have not moved out of state, but just away from the minority neighborhoods to places like the suburbs. This tended to cause property values to decrease in the minority neighborhoods, making it cheaper for more minorities to move in, but also harder for the minorities to move to areas where white people may be living like the suburbs. With decreased property values beginning to happen, the property taxes were also beginning to decrease. This is what led to the development of the case Horton v. Meskill. Also during this time, the United States was barely a decade old from all of the segregation it had experienced during the 1960’s. the segregation had an influence on why whites were moving away from the minorities, which was causing these public school property tax funding’s to be low. Even though segregation de jure was outlawed at this time, there were still people living by segregation de facto. The people did not realize this at this time in the 1970’s, but it eventually built up momentum and became relevant in the Connecticut court case Sheff v. O’Neill.

Pamela Powers on December 24, 1968 was kidnapped from a YMCA in Des Moines, Iowa and then murdered. A 14-year-old boy reported having had helped Robert Anthony Williams (defendant) car door and said he saw two skinny and white legs. His car and Pamela’s clothing were found the next day. William was found two days later in a town 70 miles away. During transport one of the officers inculcated William to tell them where to find the body in order for the child’s parents to have a Christian burial. William gave in and led them to the body consequently admitting to knowledge of the crime. In that same day (December 26), the Iowa

During the supreme court case U.S v. Lopez, the United States Federal Government’s argument was that carrying a firearm inside an educational environment would lead to a violent crime. A violent crime ultimately affects the population of a school. Due to this, the federal government believed that the commerce clause should be practiced in this case. The Supreme Court backed the previous decision offered by the Five Court of Appeals. In United States v. Lopez, the U.S Supreme Court stated that Congress actually has the ability to make laws under the Clause, but these powers were limited and could not affect the Lopez case.

Everyone was subjected to security including the lawyers and employees of the court house. Everyone was either in some type of uniform or dressed extremely formal, even if they were just spectators. Few people were in the court room, but not many. The judge, lawyers and people that were being represented had not still entered the building. Moments later the plaintiff, Dawn-Evans Donahue, and the defendant Joseph Donahue with their lawyers Michael Morris and John M. Makowski, entered the court room. They had taken their place on each of the court room to make their cases in front of the judge. The bailiff then told us to all rise for their entrance of Judge Polansky. We all rose and took our seats. The court had now been set in motion for deliberation. The judge was wearing the standard gown that is portrayed in films and in real life, there was no jury because this was not a trial court, this was a family matters case.

The purpose of this research is to rationalize an amendment to the Constitution of the United States forcing Supreme Court Justices into a medical review to determine if the Justices are physically and mentally able to continue to serve their tenure. The focus is to create a half way point between two opinions in the very controversial subject of the Supreme Court Justices tenure. As the Judicial Branch becomes more active, citizens have questioned the rationale of justices serving for life, while others maintain that there is no need for change. The middle ground purposed is the establishment of a medical review of the justices and the hard part is establishing when they are medically unfit to serve. Considering the Constitutional purpose

Facts: After Williams was arrested for the disappearance of a 10 year old girl police told his counsel that they would be transporting him from Davenport, Iowa where he was arraigned to Des Moines, Iowa where he was to be held with out questioning him about the case. Eventually after talking with the transporting officer he made incriminating statements and gave information on the area that the body of the child could be found. A large team of volunteers that was actually searching around the area where the body was found was then called off

The city of Atlanta had experienced over a two year period from 1979-1981 of egregious acts of murders committed on more than twenty African American adolescent males. However, Wayne Williams, a native of Atlanta, was the center of law enforcement investigation, which implicated his involvement in at least two of the children murders around that time. Nonetheless, law enforcement linked Wayne Williams to those murders because of detailed evidence found on the victims, which was later discovered that evidence was from Williams apartment (Curriden, 1992). Furthermore, the evidence which was found was a unique fiber from the carpet of Williams apartment and the number of people having this fiber was very small in number (Curriden, 1992)). The fiber evidence was the main part of the case to associate Williams with

The United States’ attention was captivated on the Supreme Court Case of Powell vs Alabama during the 1930s. During the time period, this case revealed the brutal treatment towards African Americans more than any other event. The case began on March 25, 1931, when a group of young white and African American youths were traveling on a train to find a job. A physical encounter broke out between them and the white youths were thrown out of the train. Then they reported the incident to a stationmaster, who stopped the train. The police arrived to gather the nine African Americans and brought them to jail. Nine young African Americans were recognized as the “Scottsboro boys”. They were accused of rape of two white women on that train. The white jury convicted eight of them, all except one, the youngest at 12-years-old, and were sentenced to death. These youths were falsely charged with raping two white women in Alabama. Although there was no evidence that linked the African Americans to the white women, they were still charged with sexual assault. The two women -- fearing prosecution for their sexual relationship with the white men agreed to testify against the black youths. The Supreme Court Case of Powell vs Alabama is crucial in both Civil Rights history and in the evolution of the Constitution.

My understanding of the court system has changed almost weekly from the beginning of my semester. I do understand things that I never thought I would’ve have known or even cared about in the least. The book Courtroom 302 has brought an even different side of thinking into this. The book goes into detail about the criminal court in Chicago. He watches all of the actions and different trials that come and go in the courtroom 302. He presents many different cases throughout the book which gives more insight then just a single case.

Challenging the way people thought of the law created a ripple effect that changed the judicial system as a whole. Although not every court case had immediate impact for the person being charged, the court cases provided documentation to help decide the fate of other convicted criminals down the road. These cases helped set precedent for other cases. Looking at Weems v. United States in 1910 , Weems received a sentence for falsifying two public documents, a case that had nothing to do with the death penalty; however, the trial would have astounding effects on death penalty cases in the future (Margulies, 2004). Weems received what was deemed to be a sentence of cruel and unusual punishment of “twelve years and one day hard labor, a chain

On Friday, April, 4, 2014, I observed the Vanderburgh County Superior Court to observe different family law cases. The cases I heard involved contempt of court for failing to pay child support, failure to appear for a court appointed drug test, birth certificate affidavit, request for contest hearing time, and an issue of paternity case. Magistrate Judge Sheila M. Corcoran was presiding over the family court hearings. When entering the courthouse, I was greeted by security and advised to remove any cell phones, and/or, any other items that would trigger a metal detector. After this, I proceeded straight to look for the family courtroom. After roaming around mindlessly for a couple minutes, I decided to ask the courthouse officer monitoring