Examples Of Corruption In To Kill A Mockingbird

The United States judicial system runs on the simple, yet sacred, principle that, “a defendant is innocent until proven guilty.” With this comes the unwritten and undeniable force that can be labeled the court of public opinion. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, it is clearly exemplified that this court of public opinion, corrupted by the intense racism of the Depression-era South. In this the court of public opinion had overthrown all evidence and led to the conviction of a blatantly innocent man. Faith in the system is something rapidly decaying in these times; however if one cannot trust this system does one resort to mob rule? What would be the proper measurements taken to uphold justice. The criminal justice system is something that needs its rules of conduct to carry out justice as best as it can, but

McDonald was a 17 year old black boy who walking in the middle of the road, although it was very odd behavior it was in no way threatening. This led to officer Jason Van Dyke to shoot sixteen bullets into McDonald who while being shot began to run away and the shots continued even while he was down and presumably dead. This was all caught on dashcam video, which the police had immediate access to and the facts of the case are completely non-disputed. It took 400 days for this cop to be charged even with this sort of definitive evidence and without a whistle blower and a mass of people pressuring the courts it may have been delayed indefinitely. Its theorized that Chicago Mayor Rahn Emmanuel was the root cause for the delay. Its speculated that during Emmanuel’s reelection he did not want anything to show his leadership as weak. So maybe working with these facts one can assume that racial prejudice led to the murder then the courts were manipulated by petty politics. Without the pressuring from the public justice may have never been