9/11 Short Stories

When it comes down to a film or television series that is known as a popular hit, most people may consider something along the lines of a comedy or drama. No one, in my opinion, gives much thought into viewing a film such as a documentary. A person may say or hear the word ‘documentary’ and particular stereotypical views such as elderly-people-sitting-around-on-a-Sunday-afternoon-with-nothing- better-to-do, or the history channel perhaps come to mind. Not many individuals give documentaries a chance, but I would encourage the viewing of the Academy award-winning documentary, Murder on a Sunday Morning, also known as Un Coupable Ideal, directed by the French-film maker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade.

Christopher Simmons was charged with burglary and the murder of Shirley Crook. He and his two friends plotted to break into her home rob and murder her. One of his friends decided not to go through with the plot, but his other friend helped. They went in the middle of the night into her home bound her and threw her over the bridge. At trial with the evidence, videotaped confession from Simmons, and the testimony against him from his friend proving that it was a premeditated plan the jury recommended a death sentence. He appealed his case with counsel and felt his past history of a clean record and his troubled background should have been a factor in the sentencing. Simmons’s case worked its way to the courts and it was eventually overturned. According to Birckhead (2008), “With its decision in Roper v. Simmons,11 invalidating the imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were younger than eighteen when their crimes were committed,12 the Court has, perhaps, heralded yet another shift in the perspective of the legal system-and the culture at large-towards adolescents who commit crimes”(p.389). The Supreme Court ruled that the punishment now violates the Eighth Amendment 's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Thus, they sentenced Simmons to life imprisonment without parole.

The National Geographic film, A Portrait of a Killer, examines the types of stress that living beings can endure, and how it can thus affect the rest of their bodies. Severe chronic stress can lead even lead to the destruction of brain cells. Dr. Robert Sapolsky is a neurobiologist of Stanford University who has been researching stress for over thirty years. In order to study stress and its implications upon nonhumans, he went to Africa to study baboons. This species has only three hours of stress caused by eating, and the rest of their daily routine is consumed by about nine hours of free time. Much like Western society, baboons socially stress out one another, as they have social hierarchies to regulate how them interact with one another.

Many people say the documentation of the murder of the Clutter family is Truman Capote’s best work. It started out as an article for The New Yorker, and evolved into the non-fiction novel; the first of its kind. Capote traveled to Kansas with friend Harper Lee to research the killings. In the course of six years bringing this narrative together, Capote began taking drugs and drinking heavily due to the dark nature of the book. Truman Capote tells the true story of a family murdered in In Cold Blood, through character analysis and symbolism to prove nature is a stronger force than nature in shaping a person’s character.

The Jack the Ripper Murders happened in the East End of London in 1888 and, although the Whitechapel Murderer was only a threat to a small section of the community in a small part of London, the murders had a huge impact on society as a whole.

Murder on a Sunday Morning is about an African American boy who was wrongly convicted of murder. He was only fifteen years old when his life changed forever. While first watching the documentary, it seems to the audience that Brenton Butler, the convicted boy, is guilty. Mr. Stephens, husband of the victim, Ann Stephens, claims that Butler came over, tried to take Anna Stephens’ purse, and then before she could comply, he raised his gun and shot her in the face. Sadly, Mr. Stephens was the only eye-witness, which is a major red flag, as he is connected to the victim. After being forced by the detective, Butler confesses. Once defense attorney, Patrick McGuinness is involved, he has Butler tell the court of his innocence and thus beings the criminal proceedings for Brenton Butler.

What did the judge do wrong? Which judicial selection option—either appointment, election, or merit—would help to reduce instances of judicial misconduct?

In Garden City, two men named, Richard Eugene Hickock, 28, and Perry Edward Smith, 31, convicted of murder on Tuesday. They were condemned to hang. The Clutter’s were a very wealthy and happy farm family. They were all shot point blank in the head on November 15. They proclaimed they killed the clutter family because they did not want any witnesses in the robbery. Their plan was to steal the safe in the Clutter’s house they heard while they were serving time in prison at the Kansas Penitentiary.

A little after a year of the McVicker incident, William found himself in an Orange County jail. But due to the officers getting his record’s mixed up; William was cleared to walk and given a court date. But William would of course not show up for the court date and would eventually start his reign and terror as the Freeway Killer.

Footsteps started towards his door from the dark corridor outside it. Slow, steady, purposeful footsteps, edging ever closer to his lonely, dark room. David reached above his head and turned his gas lamp up, so that it lit the room with flickering orange, creating strange shadows that danced on the walls like a five-year olds nightmare.

Upon opening the back door, Vasquez observed that there was just enough space to squeeze past the refrigerator blocking the exit. The air smelled of burned rubber and melted wires; a damp ash covered the ground, sticking to their boots. In the kitchen, Vasquez and Fogg discerned only smoke and heat damage—a sign that the fire had not originated there—and so they pushed deeper into the nine-hundred-and-seventy-five-square-foot building. A central corridor led past a utility room and the master bedroom, then past a small living room, on the left, and the children’s bedroom, on the right, ending at the front door, which opened onto the porch. Vasquez tried to take in everything, a process that he compared to entering one’s mother-in-law’s house for the first time: “I have the same curiosity.”

James Patrick Bulger was born on the 16th of March, 1990, to Ralph and Denise Bulger in Kirkby, Merseyside.

Evil is everywhere. Evil is within people, it is shown in the day and the night, and even in times of light and dark. Evil is especially seen when reading the murders of Simon and Piggy in the book The Lord of the Flies. This essay will view the differences between the murder that happened in the dark to the murder that happened in daylight, then analyze the murderers and how they react to what they did, and lastly compare the evilness of each murder.

2. What’s does my client getting a divorce from Mr. Parker have to do with her murdering Mr. Parker?

Sarah heard the screams and tried to make herself as small as she could. The closet she was hiding in was pitch black, not much bigger than a phone booth and smelled of strong chemicals. But for now, it was her only refuge from the terror that reigned just beyond the darkness of her sanctuary. The sheer panic owned Sarah in the moments leading up to now had drifted, as she realised the frequency of the screams from the nearby hallways had decreased in the last few minutes. But she was still every bit as scared as when the whole thing began. She could hear her own breathing and wondered how loud it may sound to the outside world. Sarah hadn’t heard gunshots for a while, five minutes. Maybe more. She couldn’t know for sure. The shooting began without warning and turned the school into chaos sometime during second period when Sarah was in the library.