The Wrongful Conviction of Rubin (Hurricane) Carter
There is no doubt in the minds of many people who are familiar with the Rubin "Hurricane" Carter story that he, and the man who was convicted for murder with him, John Artis, are innocent of those crimes. While no one knows for sure who is guilty of the crime, but the one thing that is for certain is that Carter and Artis were victims of racial bias from many people who would see them in jail. This story is truly a tragic one of a promising career, and of a life that was spoiled by prejudice and one that reviles some of the ways in which, society's present legal system can fail to ensure the right of justice for people in our society.
In a 1975 Penthouse Interview Carter stated that "I'm not in jail for committing murder. I'm in jail partly because I'm a black man in America, where the powers that be will only allow a black man to be an entertainer or a criminal" (http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Studio/4909/hurricane.html). Judging from the evidence of the case and the manner in which, it progressed over a course of 19 years, it is not difficult to understand how this could be so. The original case that was presented against Carter and Artis was not a strong one and almost solely relied on circumstance and the testimony of two known felons (a fact which, does not automatically make their statements untrue, or course). Added to this, the fact that when taken to the hospital the very night of the murders, Carter and Artis could not be identified as the murderers by the surviving victims, passed a lie detector test and were released, the police apparently "never considering them suspects" (http://www.stanford.edu/~zdillon/story.html).
However, four months later whe...
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... triumphs which, formed out of the despair and anger of being wrongfully convicted, are certainly a story which, deserves much attention so to celebrate hope and to ensure that this tragedy does not occur in the future.
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In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander states that we still use our criminal justice system to “label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage i...
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“A report by the United States General Accounting Office in 1990 concluded that 82 percent of the empirically valid studies on the subject show that the race of the victim has an impact on capital charging decisions or sentencing verdicts or both” (86).
- on June 23, Williams was driving when a heavy car came up from behind him and tried to force his car off the embankment and over a cliff with a 75 ft. drop off. The bumpers of the two cars were stuck and the cars had to pass right by a highway patrol station, which was a 35 mile and hour zone, but the car was pushing his at 70 miles per hour. Williams started blowing his horn hoping to attract the attention of the patrolmen, but when they saw they just lifted their hands and laughed. He was finally able to rock loose from the other car’s bumper and make a sharp turn into a ditch. He went to the police about it, but they would not do anything because he was black. The police in Monroe never did anything to help blacks
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After a second trial in which the prosecution was allowed to argue for the first time that the murders were motivated by racial revenge, Carter and Artis are reconvicted; the same life sentences are imposed, and they are forced to return to prison.
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Statistical accounts show consistent accord in that African Americans are disproportionately arrested over whites. What is much less lucid, however, is the real reason for this disparity. Both criminologists and political scientists alike have expounded remarkably polarized explanations for this phenomenon. Exemplary of this are two arguments as developed as they are diametrically opposed, that of William Wilbanks and that of Samuel Walker, Cassia Spohn and Miriam DeLone.
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In James S. Hirsch’s book about Rubin "Hurricane" Cater, Hurricane, the author describes how Carter was wrongfully imprisoned and how he managed to become free. Hirsch tells about the nearly impossible battle for Carter and his friend John Artis for freedom and justice. Both, Carter and Artis, were convicted of a triple homicide, and both were innocent.
We can conclude with her analyses that the criminal justice in America is biased an even though I don’t agree with the suggestion Alexander has heard from other people that mass incarceration is a “conspiracy to put blacks back in their place” (p.5). It is clear that the justice system in the US is not completely fair, and that collective action must arise to struggle it.
On June 4th, 1942, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the battle of the coral sea, the Japanese navy attacked the island of Midway. The Battle of Midway was the most significant naval war in history and was a turning point of World War II, as it was a U.S victory and previous to the battle of midway the Japanese had not lost a battle at sea, placing the U.S. in a position to reduce the Japanese Empire.
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Globalization, the acceleration and strengthening of worldwide interactions among people, companies and governments, has taken a huge toll on the world, both culturally and economically. It’s generating a fast-paced, increasingly tied world and also praising individualism. It has been a massive subject of matter amongst scientists, politicians, government bureaucrats and the normal, average human population. Globalization promoted the independence of nations and people, relying on organizations such as the World Bank and also regional organizations such as the BRICs that encourage “a world free of poverty” (World Bank). Despite the fact that critics can argue that globalization is an overall positive trend, globalization has had a rather negative cultural and economic effect such as the gigantic wealth gaps and the widespread of American culture, “Americanization”; globalization had good intentions but bad results.