The Murder Of A Green Light

In the book Monster by Walter Dean Myers, two boys named Steve Harmon and James King are facing charges for felony murder. Sandra Petrocelli is the prosecutor, and Kathy O’Brien is the defense attorney for Steve Harmon. They both do an excellent job with their arguments, however, they both want different things. Because O’Brien wants the jury to see Steve as a good person while Petrocelli wants the jury to see Steve as a monster, they each must bring their strongest arguments to determine Steve’s guilt or innocence. Kathy O’Brien is Steve Harmon’s defense attorney, and her job is to prove Steve not guilty.

You're not gonna tell me you believe that phony story about losing the knife, and that business about being at the movies. Look, you know how these people lie! It's born in them! I mean what the heck? I don't even have to tell you. They don't know what the truth is! And lemme tell you, they don't need any real big reason to kill someone, either! No sir! [Juror 10, page 51] This type of prejudice offended many of the other jurors, especially Juror 5 who is of similar race to the accused.

The prosecution reduced the charge from murder to manslaughter as they did not believe the requisite degree of reckless indifference or lack of mens rea were sufficient evidence to support the charge of murder. The use of discretion is outlined in the

The appeals court ruled that there was no evidence to show that the defendant’s conduct was willful or wanton or in reckless disregard to safety.

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.

assistance of council, and procedural bars, venue, and jury selection, as well as potential racism by jurors. According to ( Tabak, 1999) “these reasons apply in cases in which the death penalty may be sought.” When illustrating the use of prosecutorial discretion two crime types that can be

Dissenting opinions: For this case there were no dissenting opinions in the case because there was no evidence to entrapment. Therefore, the judges agreed that the verdict was fair and that the judge in the case had the right to enforce the ruling of entrapment. Furthermore, they felt that no harm was done in the question to the jury on entrapment.

In 1976, the United States Supreme Court, in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262 (1976), and Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242 (1976) held that the discretion to impose the death sentence for specific crimes was to be bi-furcated into two separate trials. The first to determine guilt or innocence; the second to determine the aggravating and mitigating factors. The State of Oceana adopted the findings of the U.S. Supreme Court in People v. Wende, 600 P. 2d 1071 (Cal: Supreme Court 1979) In

This case made it to The Supreme Court. Once the appellant appealed his conviction of manslaughter that he received at the Ontario Court of Appeal on May 18th, 1990, which sentenced him to four years of imprisonment. The Crown defined manslaughter in Section 222 ( 5 ) of The Criminal Code, which states that a person commits culpable homicide when he causes the death of a human being means of an unlawful act or an act of negligence. However, when The Defense challenged this section due to the unique circumstances of this case that caused this case it to go to The Supreme Court of Canada since the Defense also said that it was in conflict with Section 7 of the Charter. In conclusion, the Defense we’re trying to dispute the fact that the accused committed manslaughter.

In State of Oregon v. Kipland Kinkel, Judge Haselton summarizes the decision to deny Kinkel’s appeal of his sentencing. Kinkel was sentenced by the Lower Court to 111 years and 8 months for the confession of 4 murders and 25 accounts of attempted murder. Several medical personal and parents testified against Kinkel at the hearing stating that, “he is and remains dangerous,” (para. 15). The defense’s grounds for appeal consist of the sentencing being cruel and unusual and that the protection of society was considered more than reformation. The higher court denied it was cruel and unusual because it did not shock the conscience. The presiding judge also denied that reformation was of higher significance than the protection of society because there were multiple victims affected in a public setting.

Koppersmith’s testimony of his actions portrayed a picture of unintentional events. The judge referred to the Woods case, “ there was some evidence that the appellant failed to perceive the risk that the victim might die as a result of his actions.” Because there was evidence that gave a reasonable theory that would have supported the jury receiving instructions on criminally negligent homicide, there was error in the trial court not giving the jury the instructions. Therefore the judgment was reversed and the case was remanded for a new trial.

Does this violate the Sixth Amendment? “The Sixth Amendment guarantees the rights of criminal defendants, including the right to a public trial without unnecessary delay, the right to a lawyer, the right to an impartial jury, and the right to know your accusers are and the nature of the charges and evidence against you”.   Conclusion  By a vote of eight to one from the Supreme Court Justices, it was determine that Hurst Sixth Amendment right was violated. Why? In their opinion, the Sixth Amendment requires a jury not a judge, to determine why it is necessary to impose the death sentence. In Florida, the jury does recommend the death sentence, but the judge does not have to take the jury’s thoughts into consideration when deciding the death sentence. The Dissent opinion, the Sixth Amendment does not require that the judge determine why it is necessary to impose the death sentence.   Opinion After the fact, I concluded that Hurst Sixth Amendment rights were violated by Florida Supreme Court. First, the Sixth Amendment does not grant a judge the final verdict on death penalty cases. In such a case the role of the judge is to carry out the final verdict of the

In support of this position, the government cited two decided decisions by the Court holding that the failure to object to a jury instruction is not controlling “for purposes of appellate review of the denial of a directed verdict or judgment notwithstanding the verdict.” Rather, the question of whether a party is entitled to a directed verdict “depends upon the sufficiency of the evidence up to that point in the trial,” not of the content of jury instructions, which are “outside the scope of that analysis.”

The issue here becomes whether the court’s decision was the right one or if they could have come up with a different decision had the case been studied from different perspectives making the decision wrong. Both arguments (for and against the Court’s decision) are discussed below, but I personally believe that court’s decision was the only right one to make.

Under the veil of ignorance people unaware of their personal characteristics or places in society, choose the principles they wish to have govern the society (Davidson 48). No one could relate to the situation that these men had lived through. In the end a life was taken leaving many with answers and many emotions. Many of these people wanted justice for what was done but yet what would they have done given the circumstances and not in the best of shape emotionally and physically. It’s really tough to think had they not resorted to cannibalism they all may have died. That would have left even more families distraught. The chief justice at the time discussed various definitions of murder. One implying that, “In order to save your own life you may lawfully take away the life of another, when that other is neither attempting nor threatening yours, nor is guilty of any illegal act whatever towards you or anyone else” (Theory of Jurisprudence). Based upon this one would assume that murder should be ruled