In preparation for trial, Ken Anderson had immersed himself in the details of the case. The district attorney knew he was up against formidable opponents: both defense attorneys had impressive track records, and Allison had been one of Anderson’s own law professors. Addressing the five-man, seven-woman jury that morning, the district attorney laid out the state’s theory of the case, arguing that on the night of his birthday, Michael had worked himself into a rage after Christine rejected his advances. “He had rented a videotape, a very sexually explicit videotape, and he viewed that sexually explicit videotape, and he got madder and madder,” Anderson said. “He got some sort of blunt object, probably a club, and he took that club and he went …show more content…
She was followed by Elizabeth Gee, who painted a portrait of an unhappy marriage. She told the jury of the Mortons’ frequent arguments and how she once heard Michael bark, “Bitch, go get me a beer.” She vividly described finding Christine’s body and how aloof Michael had been in the weeks that followed. When Anderson asked her to recount what he had done two days after Christine’s funeral, Elizabeth became emotional; she paused for a moment to collect herself, then looked at Michael. “Weed-Eating her marigolds,” she said, enunciating each word. Though much of Elizabeth’s testimony had felt “almost rehearsed,” jury foreman Mark Landrum told me, her disgust for Michael in that moment had been palpable. “From that moment on, I didn’t like Michael Morton,” Landrum said. “I’m assuming the entire jury felt that way too. Whether he was a murderer or not was still to be determined, but I knew that I did not like him.”
Building on the idea that Michael hated his wife, Anderson also cast him as sexually deviant. Over the protests of the defense, Judge Lott allowed the district attorney to show jurors the first two minutes of Handful of Diamonds, the adult video that Michael had rented, under the pretext that it established his state of mind before the murder. Though tame by today’s standards, the film did not curry favor with a Williamson County jury. “I was repulsed,” Lou Bryan, a now-retired schoolteacher who served on the jury, told me. “I kept thinking, ‘What kind of person would watch this?’
Even when Michael’s new defense team, through the innocence project, found a crime that was eerily similar to the method of murder and subsequent events to the one that Michael was convicted of, the new prosecutor in Williamson County fought hard to keep DNA testing from taking place, even stating that they objected to the testing now because the defense hadn’t requested it before (Morton, 2014). There was further evidence of ineffectiveness in that the coroner who’d changed his estimated time of death between the autopsy and trial, had come under scrutiny for his findings in this case, as well as several others, with claims of gross errors “including one case where he came to the conclusion that a man who’d been stabbed in the back had committed suicide” (Morton, 2014). This was only one of the many injustices that were committed against Michael Morton throughout his trial. In August of 2006, the defense was finally granted permission to perform DNA testing on the items that had been taken from his wife’s body (Morton, 2014). Although this testing did not reveal any information about the guilty party, it did at least give Michael the knowledge that Chris was not sexually violated before or after her death (Morton,
He was ‘almost falling asleep’ within the trial of evidence. This evidence suggests that the choices made by jurors were not about the consequences of their decision instead about how they can be somewhere else. Likewise, On The Waterfront showed similar disregard for the consequences of their
Reporters and camera people coverage for what a local writer called the “Super Bowl of murder trials.” Christopher Darden, the prosecutor representing the state, led off the prosecution’s opening statement by labeling Simpson as an abusive husband and a jealous lover of Nicole Brown Simpson. Darden told the jurors, “if he couldn’t have her, he didn’t want anybody else to have her.” The next day, Johnie Cochran, OJ’s lawyer, gave an opening statement for the defense in which he presented a confused timeline of events and suggested he was so crippled by “arthritis” that he couldn’t possibly do a double murder. Cochran told the jury the defense would prove the evidence was “contaminated, compromised, and ultimately corrupted.”
Davis, the first juror to vote not guilty, ignored his emotional attachment to the first-degree murder case and thought purely around the evidence the boy and the witnesses provided to the court. The other jurors said, “eleven men and you think he’s guilty, nobody has to think about it twice except you.” They said this in accordance to system 1 and original response to the stories told in the court. Otherwise, not once did Mr. Davis refer to system 1 through laziness. Mr. Davis spent the entirety of that hot day in a room with eleven other men, spending every second he had on convincing them of the potential error that could have been made in convicting the young boy.
Prejudice in this book is present and as a jury in the trial, it can bad for the accused in many ways depending on what the crime was committed. A man was murdered and the son of that man is the only one known to be with him that night yet claims to have been elsewhere. The jurors are the only ones to determine this guy’s future to be proven innocent, or falsely accused guilty by the preconceived notion of the juries. Only one jury stood out only because he knew the right for a fair trial is to be upon this man and as for everyone, the only one who hasn’t judged the boy in any way. Juror number three thought he was a slum as if any other slum would be, a criminal living trashy and even think they’re stupid.
When asked why he voted not guilty, juror eight stated “Look, this boy has been kicked around all his life. You know---living in a slum, his mother dead since he was nine. He spent a year in and a half in an orphanage while his father served a jail term for forgery. That’s not a very good head start. He’s had a pretty terrible sixteen years.
The film 12 Angry Men opens in a courthouse where closing arguments have just concluded in the first-degree murder trial of an 18-year old boy accused of stabbing his father to death. The judge gives the jury instructions regarding their duties as jurors. The judge stresses the seriousness of the crime, what is at stake, and if they have a reasonable doubt regarding the accused’s guilt, they must bring him a verdict of not guilty. If, conversely, they have no reasonable doubt, then they must find the accused guilty. No matter what they ultimately decide, their decision must be unanimous.
Steve’s judgment of his actions is similar to a pendulum swinging. Although Steve believes within himself that he is innocent, of the important people around him, make him insecure as to the degree of his innocence and turn to others for confirmation. Steve Harmon, the defendant, is faced with an internal conflict that questions his self-identity and his character in relation to the crime.
The last sentence in Dahl’s story “And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle” showed the woman was not in the affective state and acted
The audience also knows how much time Koenig has spent looking into this case and for her to still be questioning it makes it hard to believe that the court made a decision in such a short amount of time, supporting the theory that bias played a factor. “I see many problems with the state's case. But I also see many problems with Adnan’s story too.” This antithesis explains how there simply were just too many holes in both sides of the case to make an accurate conviction (Koenig 150). These gray areas within the case are the sole reasons why nobody can confidently say who did it, making it very unlikely that the court's decision was made strictly from evidence.
Throughout the trial, Hooks and the prosecution present no concrete facts and build an entire case for the jury’s bias to act on. One of the witnesses, the deceased’s wife, was brought to the stand not for her testimony, but for the jury to see the distress of this white woman. Hooks described his thinking of Susan Marie Heine on the stand as “she would persuade them not precisely with what she had to say but with the entirety of who she was” (Guterson 287). He hoped that the jury would shift their focus towards their emotions and disregard the facts of the trial. If the jury focuses more on “the entirety of who she was”, a devastated white woman who allegedly lost her husband to a Japanese man, their emotions will provoke their unconscious bias to convict Kabuo.
Each day, the courtroom was filled with reporters, writers, and friends who camped out at 2 am with hopes of getting a seat. At the first trial, they had brought up sexual molestation and the self-defense plea. Lyle falsely testified that his father violated him when he was 7 years old, and 13 when his mom stopped. Erik dishonestly explained Lyle and he shared that their parents were abusing them when Kitty slapped Lyle, and Erik was shocked when his brother’s hair fell off. Lyle’s old girlfriend, Jamie Pisarcik, testified that Erik couldn’t have been shocked when Lyle’s baldness was revealed because Erik had told her the previous spring about Lyle wearing a toupee.
The script introduces the viewers to the typical behavior and the state of mind of these jurors, who surprisingly turn out to be the last to change their opinions from “guilty” to “not guilty”. Juror#3 the frustrated father whose personal conflicts and experiences influence his view of the accused’s crime is very desperate to make it clear that his mind is already made up before the deliberations even start. Similar
From the very beginning, this case has not been carried out in an honest manner, and possesses many faults as can be seen in the evidence provided today. The witness testimony not only lacks medical evidence proving that the crime ever happened in the first place, but also lacks logical argument which will no doubt have made you all feel ambiguity about the case. First of all, it is physically impossible for Tom Robinson to have beaten and raped Ms. Mayella. This is due to the fact that from the sheriff’s and Mr. Ewell’s testament, we know that Miss Mayella was beaten mostly on the right side of her body. Since it is much easier for a left handed person to hit another person on their right, we can reach the conclusion that Miss Mayella was most likely beaten by someone left handed.
Instead of doing what all the others did, he approached the case with the attitude that he had to have decisive evidence one way or the other, and he was not convinced for many of reasons. His approachable, respectable, and determined attitude gives him many qualities that a leader should exemplify. As well as his beliefs and attitude, the actions that Mr. Davis takes during this case makes the audience and characters evaluate his role of