' The Stranger, And Meursault's Trial For Murder?

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In society’s minds, they would like to believe that the judicial system is unflawed and is able to function without any mistakes. On paper, the judicial system seems to be in perfect working order; however, in reality, it is anything but perfect. Cases are misjudged and mistried far too often for the system to be dubbed “fair” and “just.” An example of a mistrial occurs in The Stranger, during Meursault’s trial for murder. By all means, Meursault is undoubtedly guilty of killing a man, but nevertheless his trial was still unfair. This occurs because the judicial system fails to correctly convict Meursault of manslaughter rather than murder. According to the events in The Stranger, Meursault should have been convicted of manslaughter; however, he is on trial for murder because of the unjustness of the judicial system and the assumed presence of malice.
Literature Review
The journal articles used for research of this paper were extremely helpful in proving Meursault's incorrect conviction . The first article that drew attention to proving his innocence was An Analysis of the Effects of Subjective and Objective Instruction Forms on Mock-Juries' Murder/Manslaughter Distinctions written by Matthew Spackman, Jann Belcher, Justin Calapp, and Aaron Taylor (2002). When first researching …show more content…

Murder is defined by Curtis (1910) as the act of killing another human being (p.639). This is done unlawfully and with malice aforethought. Most of the time, those convicted of murder are found guilty for reasons of previous violence with the victim, intention on the action, and how much they dwelt on their feelings (Spackman, Belcher, Calapp, & Taylor, 2002, p.616). For example, if the defendant had a history of violence against the victim, intended the action, and dwelt on their feelings, they were most likely to be convicted of

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