‘The Trials of Oz’
Court as Theatre
In the first case, Robertson is not principally involved as counsel for the Oz editors in their obscenity trial. He is just a ‘stage-hand for the defence’. We note the metaphor: a stage-hand is someone who assists at a theatrical production. Robertson frequently recurs to the idea of the court as a theatre and the players in the justice game as actors:
Like the squalor behind the splendour of the stage at Convent Garden [the great
London opera house], so the solemn ritual of an Old Bailey trial disguised the fact that it was produced in greasepaint and chaos. The solicitors’ clerks who stage-managed the shows would meet to rehearse the cast of the day around the formica tables of the Rex Café
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That the judge is unaware that Hair is a musical is supposed to suggest how out of touch he is with reality.
The cumulative effect of this perspective is that if the judge is hard on the allegedly obscene editors and misrepresents their defence to the jurors, this would only be what you would expect of such a second-rate individual. Robertson’s presentation, based on truth, is heavily influenced by bias and opinion against the judge and, thereby, in favour of the defendants. The eventual verdict of guilty is seen to be inevitable. The editors were sent to prison for psychiatric examination.
‘Reason’ and ‘Sanity’
The voices of ‘reason’ and ‘sanity’, writes Robertson, were outraged and an appeal lodged. First, bail was granted by Justice Griffiths, whose decision was made on the advice of his daughter, ‘a young blonde in a denim jacket and jeans’. The appeal before the Lord Chief Justice succeeded after he was persuaded that Oz paled in comparison, in terms of obscenity, with numerous other publications freely available.
Although Oz died from an ‘overdose of publicity’, Robertson makes the telling point that the usual ironic effect of obscenity trials is to heighten public interest in the book or artwork examined.
The principal representation of truth in ‘The Trials of Oz’ is Robertson’s detailed presentation of the initial courtroom battle, including lengthy
Despite the risks that one might have associated with his defense of a slave that had killed her master, regardless of the motives, Jameson appears to have made every effort to defend her to the best of his abilities. Even though Jameson appeared to be a good lawyer “according to those who knew him: as a lawyer [Jameson] was not profound” (McLaurin 85), so to aid Jameson in “labor and research” (McLaurin 85) Hall appointed two lawyers that were subordinate to Jameson. Now Jameson may not have been the best at trial research,but when it came to his courtroom skills “his contemporaries nevertheless admired him…” (McLaurin 85). Though not for his presentation, or his cross-examination skills, but for his “almost uncanny ability to read a jury” (McLaurin 85). Due to this skill of reading a jury many who knew him said he was “an excellent judge of men…” (McLaurin 85) which would have given him and advantage during Celia’s trial, unfortunately the prosecution in this case was (also/to) strong, led by Robert Prewitt, they virtually prevented Jameson from making any sort of case for the defense of Celia. Despite the fact that Jameson encountered some resistance from the “presiding judge whose consistent rulings to sustain the state’s objections revealed, if not his hostility toward the defendant, at least a desire for a perfunctory defense
The article begins by investigating the rise in defence counsel in English criminal trials. Prior to the 18th century, English criminal trials were short, and centred on the defendant’s “natural response to evidence as they heard it for the first time” (223). In an era of discretionary justice being administered by judges and juries, defence
In the literature, The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the idea and representation of justice, and its relationship to that of the treatment of women in Afghan society, the ever-changing politics of Afghanistan, and the desired results of redemption and forgiveness, become illustrated through the novel’s characters and motives. Justice can be defined as the quality of being guided by truth, reason, and fairness. The Kite Runner illustrates the power of influence from an outside power and its effects on society, and the minds and lifestyles of the people. In relationship to the Cheverus High School Grad-at-Grad profile the actions and wrongdoings that take place in the The Kite Runner and in Afghanistan prove to be injustice.
Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court. Roth ran a business in New York by selling books, photos, and magazines. Roth was charged with 4 counts for sending inappropriate circulars and an inappropriate book. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Roth’s appeal. Alberts was prosecuted for the sale of lewd books, and for writing inappropriate advertisements within the books. Albert’s conviction was upheld by a lower court. The Court must decide if indecent material is protected by the freedom of speech and press in the First Amendment. All ideas, even the most foolish, controversial, and intolerable, are protected by free speech. The only exception is when they interfere in more important safeties. However, indecency has been demonstrated to have no redeeming
The issue of obscenity was mostly associated with movies and visual productions that produced materials that were accessible to the public. The United States Supreme Court was at the forefront
As she told me, ‘What if Todd was really innocent?’” (Grann). This overarching question to the article conveys what Grann is really trying to portray about Willingham’s trial. Although both have different ways of conveying their purpose, both authors have the same underlying idea within their purpose to convince the reader to really think about what they have discussed. King convinces his readers by appealing to their sense of unity and underlying dislike for the way they ae being treated, while Grann does so by using evidence and analyzing all aspects of Willingham’s trial.
Parliament passed The Treason Trials Act of 1696 in response to a series of treason cases brought against political opponents of the monarchs during the later Stuart dynasty in the 1670s and 1680s. This landmark legislation, which English policy officials spent over a decade negotiating, was a reaction to what contemporaries considered blatant judicial murder and gross crown intrusion into judicial proceedings. Judges, handpicked by the crown and dependent on royal favor for personal and professional status, fashioned a courtroom environment similar to piracy trials of the subsequent decades. With no jury of their peers, unrepresented defendants had little practical defense in the hostile environment that pre-determined their guilt. The Treason Act was an attempt to try and correct the obvious deficiency in the court proceedings by chipping away at the prosecutions clear advantage. Specifically, defense witnesses were made compulsory, a power previously limited to the prosecution, and the court now accepted their testimony under oath. It provided the accused with an advanced copy of the indictment, and limited the evidence to charges listed therein. Most importantly, it guaranteed defendants the right to counsel during both the pre-trial, and the trial itself for the first time. The drafters of the bill saw that treason trials presented distinctive problems that required special procedures, “The seemingly unique features of treason prosecutions, previously emphasized- the prosecutorial imbalance, the subservience of the bench, the complexity of the offense of treason- appeared to contemporaries to demarcate the treason trial as a procedural world of its own, remote from ordinary crime.” I contend these features were not unique to treason, but shared with
The law defined obscene material as writing with no value of any kind and with the purpose to ensue scandalous and lusty thoughts in its readers. These standards for was determined in Miller v. California, a work is obscene and unfit for publishing if it is “utterly without socially redeeming value” and lacks “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” when taken as a whole. Before in these kinds of court cases, the prosecutor could extract sections of the writing to determine its obscenity as
In his essay “The Myth of Justice,“ anthropologist and author Michael Dorris disputes the idea that life is fair and believes that true justice is an unattainable fallacy. Dorris avows that anyone who has ever lived through life’s circumstances would agree that life is not fair and there is no correct balance. He declares that justice is a fallacy people believe to make life endurable. Dorris refers to his youth when he was taught of a Golden Ledger in which salvation can be found through good works. He affirms it is the idea of justice and not religion that soothes people.
The Trial located at the old bailey thoughtfully made the final judgement, the lad Charles Darnay was testified as, “Acquitted.” I am the one to be the most thankful towards for the judgement. I recall sitting on the judge’s bench, adjacent to my old school chum Stryver, glancing at the expressions of the many faces of the brimming and a-buzz old bailey. I recall the relish of the many voices all declaring the sentence, “he’ll be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he’ll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he’ll be cut into quarters,” (Pg.64) all of them
While our inclination to “regard a past event as inevitable” or “interpret information in a way that confirms our pre-existing beliefs” is often harmless in daily lives, it can have important consequences for the legal system, especially in the case of murder (White). According to Griffin, there is an undeniable existence of confirmation and hindsight bias in criminal adjudication. With this bias, the assumption of Willingham’s guilt enabled the prosecution to discard many contradictions in the physical evidence; with bias, witnesses changed their testimony to confirm their certainty on past event; with this bias, an innocent man is almost convicted of murder by some unreliable circumstantial evidence. Everyone is equal before the law. With
This essay will discuss the differences in the ‘real’ courtroom, versus the ‘fictional’ courtroom, which is the depiction most of us are exposed to. In order to accurately compare the differences between the two different courtrooms, a brief summary of each must be presented. Once each of these is portrayed, an attempt to compare and contrast the two styles and the differences that exist between them can be discussed.
A. I chose to speak on this topic simply because the essence of correcting America’s view of literary and entertainment censorship has now reached unbearable heights, threatening to defile the First Amendment.
My court room observation focuses on observations from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on November 6, 2017. I visited the court and listened to an array of proceedings highlighted by a murder trial as well as an assault case with a jury present. While I was paying attention to the facts of the cases, I was more focused on spotting the intricacies of the court room. Key discussions in lecture included a conversation about what skills are most important for lawyers, as well as the discussion about bad lawyer jokes in which we debated the difference between truth and facts. These are some of the subtleties that I tried to identify during my court room observation, however, my observations began hours before I arrived at the court house.
Censorship is a way of regulating and examining various forms of media available to the general public. It occurs in different contexts, including books, films, art plays, radios, television programs, news, internet and communications. Censorship can be achieved by prior restraint, which consists of licensing system where a work has to be submitted before publication or court injunction prohibiting dissemination of information (Cohen 11). This type of censorship prevents certain materials from being published. On the other hand, censorship can also be achieved by suppressing ideas found to be objectionable or offensive (Cohen 11). This indicates that censorship can be practiced in different forms and it can occur either before or after a work’s publication.