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“…and on the charge that the prisoner did with others to conspire to destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States in violation of the laws and customs of war-Guilty” were the words that soared out of Wallace’s mouth at the end of the trial. It was then that Henry Wirz was found guilty. Why? Why was he found guilty? This decision was based on the emotional aspect of the witnesses, and not by the actual guilt. Not only my defense, but also the defense of Wirz’s attorney, Baker, the testimony of the defendant, Henry Wirz, shows that Wirz should not have been found guilty.
Henry Wirz ran Andersonville, one of the many Confederate prison camps, which was located in Georgia. Andersonville opened in February of 1864 and closed down in May 1865. Significantly, Andersonville was not the only prison of war camp. The Union also had a prisoner of war camp located in New York, Elmira, which was also, in fact, very horrid. There were many deaths at this camp; therefore, Henry Wirz should not be found guilty. The death rate at Elmira was 25%, and the camp was only open for a year, whereas the death rate was 30% at Andersonville when it was open for fourteen months. The Elmira camp, just like Andersonville, had very bad living conditions from the start and had very poor food supplies, mostly lacking in the vegetables. Also, out of the 12,122 soldiers imprisoned at Elmira, 2,963 died there of sicknesses. Elmira, otherwise known as Hellmira, is just as bad as Andersonville was, even worse. So I am going to ask this question again: why, why should Henry Wirz be found guilty?
Wirz was being blamed for allowing the prisoners to live in a harsh living environment, but in reality, it was not him who created ...
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...nt, I was put in a time and place where I did not have the ability to think before my actions. This summer in Israel, before going to the Holocaust museum, our authority figures, our counselors, told us to get in a circle. They told us to hit the person next to us harder than the person before hit us. Not knowing why we were doing this, my group starting hitting away, almost breaking each other’s backs because we were hitting so hard. The majority of us hit the people next to us because that is what everyone else was doing. It would have been difficult to stand up for what we believed in. Just like we obeyed our authorities because we feared what they would do to us, Wirz feared General Winder because he was not sure what he was going to do to him.
Winder was superior to Wirz; therefore, he felt the need to obey him, or else he would have, himself, became killed.
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
Not guilty was the decision made by the jury during the George Zimmerman vs. Trayvon Martin trial. That verdict may have been the most controversial one of recent time. Many people were upset by the decision and felt that justice was not achieved for the young victim, Martin who was seventeen years old when he was killed. This incident seems to be a tragic example of stereotyping and racial profiling. It is also an example of how a verdict, based on the strict interpretation of the law can be the wrong verdict.
...o prove his innocence. The jury followed their emotions and the lead of the counselor to do their patriotic duty. During the early 1940’s, over 110,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans experienced the same feeling as Kabou when they were treated as criminals and endured imprisonment, not for any crime they committed, but solely as a result of their heritage.
Robert Mulka, one of the defendants, denied every little component of the camps such as the gas chambers, furnaces, and murdering of the Jews. He claimed he did not know anything that was going on. Mulka claims he heard rumors about the gas chambers and furnaces however he claims he did nothing. As the trial comes to an end, the judge sentences him life in prison but he objects the decision and asked for him and the other defendants to be understood under the circumstances they were placed under during the time of these camps. He declares that he could not have done anything else beside follow orders since there would be consequences if he were rebellious. During the entire trial, we see Mulka attempt to lie his way out of recognizing his crimes but then confess to his actions but he does this not for forgiveness but to save himself.
During the Emmett Till trial, it shocked many white people in many parts and it became an international news story. White people come together again in order to continue fighting after a defeat to the defense of the men who had kidnapped and brutally murdered Emmett Till. Many people stood up who had never stood up before due to the irritation cases of Emmett Till.
The first people to blame are the police that had beaten the confession out of Pitts and Lee. They were a major reason for this case, and why it all went wrong. They had no right to beat a confession out of anyone, even if they black. “CID investigators Potts and Hoag testified that Pitts looked "very tired, like he was in pain", complained that his jaw was swollen, told them he had been beaten, and asked them to feel the bumps on his head, and to see if they could tell what was wrong with his eyes which were bloodshot” (leagle.com).The army men did not report that anything was wrong with him. The second person for the blame, is the court system in Florida, they were bias in such a way that they had put Pitts and Lee in a courtroom with a jury full of white men. They should at least had colored men within the jury but they did not want Pitts and Lee to get a chance of getting away without punishment. They were given a death sentence, and that was to stay until they had gone to higher court. They went nine years with the death penalty hanging over their heads. There are many other people to blame as well, such as the media and false witness testimony as well as the corrupt police
The Mississippi Summer Project also known as the Freedom Summer, took place in the summer of 1964. It was organized with the help of the NAACP, SNCC, CORE and Robert Moses. The purpose of the Freedom Summer was to increase African American voting registration in the state of Mississippi. One of their main goals was to organize the Freedom Democratic Party. They hoped to challenge the white-only Mississippi Democratic Party, and set up Freedom Schools, with the intent to open community centers to African Americans seeking medical and legal assistance.
Josef Kramer and 48 other associates were tried for war crimes by Britain’s Military Court on June 14, 1945. Eleven of the defendants was sentenced to death, including Josef Kramer, nineteen other culprits were sent to prison for life, the remaining eight malefactors were acquitted. On December 12, 1945 Kramer and the other
Even after all the proof of their innocents and the 99 witness that protested their innocents the jury still put them to death. Also during this time Attorney General Mitchell Palmer lead raids known as the Palmer Raids agai...
On May 17, 1982, in Shreveport, Louisiana, Calvin Willis was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a crime he did not commit. He was convicted of brutally beating and raping a child based on three eyewitness identifications of him at trial. The case against him was substantively weak: there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, circumstantial evidence indicated that the intruder was not him, and his pregnant wife testified at trial that he was home with her at the time. But, eyewitness testimony is viscerally powerful evidence, and the jury found Calvin guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Twenty-two years later, after DNA evidence conclusively excluded Calvin from having committed the crime, he
Two dead bodies and one very guilty man, but no jail time. The OJ Simpson murder trial in 94’ may have been the biggest happening in that year. The bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death in Nicole’s home in LA. OJ was boarding a flight when the murders went public; he quickly became the first suspect in the case. The trial went on and the jury found him not guilty of the murders, despite overwhelming evidence showing his connection to the murder. In the controversial case of the killings of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, the innocent ruling incorrectly acquitted O.J. Simpson; OJ killed both of them because he possessed a motive, attempted to escape and cover up the crime,
For three hours and a half in a courtroom at Boise, Ohio, Harry Orchard assembled in the witness chair at the Haywood trial and recounted a record of offenses, slaughter, and murder… the like of which no individual in the overcrowded courtroom had ever thought of. Not in the entire scope of "Bloody Gulch" literature will there be exposed anything that approaches an equivalent to the atrocious narrative so motionlessly, coolly, and composedly voiced by this audacious, disimpassioned man-slaughterer.
This week’s reading focuses on the trial from Christmas 1945 through February 1946. The reading focused primarily on the two defendants who were extremely opposite in nature; Speer and Ribbentrop as well as what I would call the deterioration of the American prosecutorial team. The other interesting fact is that Hess was still feigning (?) his inability to remember. I disagree with some of the statements made by the author; I believe Hess, will suffering from a form of dementia (hallucinations of greatness), knew that by feigning mental illness, would not suffer the hangman’s noose.
In the film, A Civil Action, Trial Procedure was shown throughout the entire movie. There are many steps that need to be completed before a verdict and judgment can be reached. These steps are the pleadings, methods of discovery, pretrial hearings, jury selection, opening statements, introduction of evidence, cross examinations, closing arguments, instructions to the jury, and the verdict and judgment. The case in this movie was actually called Anderson v. Cryovac. The plaintiffs are the Anderson family, the Gamache family, the Kane family, the Robbins family, the Toomey family, and the Zona family. The plaintiffs’ attorneys are Jan Schlichtmann, Joe Mulligan, Anthony Roisman, Charlie Nesson, and Kevin Conway. The two co- defendants are W.R. Grace and Beatrice Foods. The two co-defendants’ attorneys are William Cheeseman, Jerome Facher, Neil Jacobs, and Michael Keating.
One of the many excitements in the news during the late sixties was the “Chicago Seven” Trial. People read about this crazy trial and the outlandish events that took place in the courtroom from the defendants wearing judicial robes to crude names and accusations directed towards the Judge. Who could we possibly expect to act so unruly in a place of order and justice? Why, the “Chicago Seven” of course. The events that led up to this trial all began with Democratic Convention of 1968 which took place in Chicago, Illinois.