The ideal historian is someone who wants to find the answer, but does not care what the answer is, curious but not committed. One might only look at the Declaration of Independence, or the Art of War to see how even a valuable historical document contains what some might call bias. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines bias as “an attitude that favors one way of feeling without considering other possibilities.” Subsequently, if Founding Fathers, Sun Tzu wrote documents that fit the definition of being biased, does the document lose its value to historians? Is there a document that does not have bias? History has long been written and interpreted through biased opinions, however, to truly study history, a historian must form an impartial view when …show more content…
For, first as to the number of witnesses, the answer is clear as to what has been said above, that more trust should be given to witnesses testifying for the prisoner, although they are not very many, as much because they testified to more believable things, as because they also affirmed and witnessed in favor of the marriage, the children, and the accused.”
In De Coras’s opinion, when a case such as the Guerre’s case comes with no evidence, it is his conclusion that witness statements hold little value. They are part of the reason the case became so confusing that by the end, the case hinged on a single question. De Coras was convinced of the unreasonable evidence against Tilth, and until the moment the “real” Martin Gurre stepped forth, would have sided with Tilth. “One sees his effort to comprehend the trial in the breaks and repetitions in the narrative and a certain confusion in the style. He clearly regrets the outcome of the trial and tries to explain why he was deceived.” Overall, De Coras tried to present the case as impartially as he could, in order to show how, when all the facts are laid out, the case came to the conclusion that it did. Du Coras saw the dangers of bias and partiality in law, and translated the case through the eye of an impartial
On Bloodsworth’s appeal he argued several points. First he argued that there was not sufficient evidence to tie Bloodsworth to the crime. The courts ruled that the ruling stand on the grounds that the witness evidence was enough for reasonable doubt that the c...
``In criminal law, confession evidence is a prosecutor’s most potent weapon’’ (Kassin, 1997)—“the ‘queen of proofs’ in the law” (Brooks, 2000). Regardless of when in the legal process they occur, statements of confession often provide the most incriminating form of evidence and have been shown to significantly increase the rate of conviction. Legal scholars even argue that a defendant’s confession may be the sole piece of evidence considered during a trial and often guides jurors’ perception of the case (McCormick, 1972). The admission of a false confession can be the deciding point between a suspect’s freedom and their death sentence. To this end, research and analysis of the false confessions-filled Norfolk Four case reveals the drastic and controversial measures that the prosecuting team will take to provoke a confession, be it true or false.
Lawyer: Firstly, Your Honour and members of the Jury, I thank you for your time. My name is Evelynne Lee and I am a lawyer for the Defence.I am here today to prove that the intentions of Hernan Cortez were good and honorable and is innocent of the crime of genocide against indigenous civilisations. It is my belief that the Defendant is not responsible and innocent of the charges on the basis that the intentions of Cortes were good and honourable. To prove my statement about Cortes, I intend to call witnesses and give exhibits to prove that his motives were good and honourable to not destroy indigenous civiisations.-30seconds
This paper will consider eye witness testimony and its place in convicting accused criminals. Psychology online (2013) defines “eye witness testimony” as a statement from a person who has witnessed a crime, and is capable of communicating what they have seen, to a court of law under oath. Eye witness testimonies are used to convict accused criminals due to the first hand nature of the eye witnesses’ observations. There are however many faults within this system of identification. Characteristics of the crime is the first issue that will be discussed in this paper, and the flaws that have been identified. The second issue to be discussed will be the stress impact and the inability to correctly identify the accused in a violent or weapon focused crime. The third issue to be discussed is inter racial identification and the problems faced when this becomes a prominent issue. The fourth issue will be time lapse, meaning, the time between the crime and the eye witness making a statement and how the memory can be misconstrued in this time frame. To follow this will be the issue of how much trust jurors-who have no legal training-put on to the eye witness testimony, which may be faltered. This paper references the works of primarily Wells and Olsen (2003) and Rodin (1987) and Schmechel et al. (2006) it will be argued that eye witness testimony is not always accurate, due to many features; inter racial identification, characteristics of the crime, response latency, and line up procedures therefore this paper will confirm that eyewitness testimonies should not be utilised in the criminal ju...
In 1552, De Coras became a member of the Toulouse parliament and participated in the famous trial of Martin Guerre. His document recorded the trial as a first hand witness, and participant of the case. The document Memorable Decision of the High Court of Toulouse was published October 7, 1571, in Romance of Real Life. De Coras’s document recounts the dissertation of Martin Guerre from his wife, Arnault du Tilh tricking his way into attaining Martin Guerre’s property, and wife Bertrande for four years before incidents would arise to cause doubt among the wife and family De Coras would go on to recount his observations of the uncle’s case against Tilh for being an imposter, and the verdict that would send Tilh to the
“ ….Judgments, right or wrong. This concern with concepts such as finality, jurisdiction, and the balance of powers may sound technical, lawyerly, and highly abstract. But so is the criminal justice system….Law must provide simple answers: innocence or guilt, freedom or imprisonment, life or death.” (Baude, 21).
This concept now embedded in the Federal Rules of Evidence can trace its philosophical underpinnings in prerevolutionary England. Before the 17th century, English courts had very few limitations on what evidence could be admitted into court.3 This court system, which was created in the wake of Norman invasion in 1066, did not ...
Subsequently, one of the main components of the procedural limitation is innocent until proven guilty, which brings about the right to a Grand Jury- a panel that determines whether or not there is a need to go to trial. As a result, a guilty verdict in criminal cases is determined with evidence that is sufficient and that must be proved “‘beyond a reasonable doubt’” (pg.131), so there is an immense need to increase the chances for the respect of “reasonable doubt” (pg.
“Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” clearly demonstrated the role of a prosecutor in the courtroom. Albeit in a negative manner, Hunter effectively bridged the functions of the police to the criminal justice process during the trial of Metcalfe (Neubauer & Fradella, 2014, p. 150). The murder trial of Metcalfe provided a frightening view of prosecutorial misconduct and unethical behavior of a prosecutor. Hunter betrayed the public he served by conspiring with Lieutenant Merchant to fabricate DNA evidence to ensure victory in the courtroom.
Any of these reforms, if they had been done during Hayes’s and Matthews’s cases, could have prevented their wrongful convictions concerning the murder. Between interrogation reform and eyewitness reform, any change in the direction of validating what actually occurred or making sure information was presented in an unbiased manner would have shown great differences in what happened to these two men. These two individuals, wrongly convicted due to two of the six main faults in the process, are now part of 16 exonerated cases from the Innocence project that involved two people accused of a single crime.
Eyewitnesses are primarily used by the criminal justice system for investigating and prosecuting crimes, particularly in circumstances where it is the only evidence available (Wells & Olson, 2003). Their testimony is highly regarded as it allows for police, prosecutors, judges and juries to establi...
For example, the old man that lived beneath the boy and his father testified that he heard a fight between the boy and the father and heard the boy yell, “I’m gonna kill you,” along with a body hitting the ground, and then claims that he saw the boy running down the stairs. With this information, along with other powerful eyewitness testimonies, all but one of the jury members believed this boy was guilty. The power of eyewitness testimony is also shown in Loftus’s (1974) study. In this study, Loftus (1974) found that those who claimed to “see” something were usually believed even when their testimony is pointless. She discovered in her study that only 18 percent of people convicted if there was no eyewitness testimony, 72 percent of people convicted when someone declared, “That’s the one!”, and even when the witness only had 20/400 vision and was not wearing glasses and claimed “That’s the one!”, 68 percent of people still convicted the person. This proves that in 12 Angry Men and Loftus (1974) study, eyewitness testimony is very powerful and influential in one’s decision to convict a
Linking this back to my previous statement, the accused needed to be trialed. The first problem that arises is the fact that the judges can rule how they please towards the accused. We all have times when we feel better than others and this can affect our reasoning as well as our attitude towards certain aspects of life. This statement also applies to the judges when they are in court. Naturally they are supposed to determine whether the accused is guilty of the crime that has happened and come up with a reasonable and suitable punishment but some judges let their personal affairs get in the way. While this might sound strictly unjust to the accused, the judge displays signs of inequality when he or she lets signs of weakness from the victim affect their final verdict. The judge is there to assign a verdict as well as give out the proper punishment that is associated with the crime that was committed. If the judge changes their decision based on their point of view as well as how they feel towards the accused this means that the judge is bias. This creates an inequality between the accused members because if different people have been accused of the same crime and get the same judge they might get different verdicts depending on what the judge thinks and feels about them. Beccaria states that ‘‘we see the same court
The current anxiety about the validity of children’s testimony in court stems mostly from heavily publicized cases of child molestation during the 1980’s (Meyer, 1997). As a result of society’s reaction to dramatic increases in reports of abuse and neglect, children increasingly are being admitted as witnesses in juvenile and criminal proceedings (Ceci & de Bruyn, 1993). Each year hundreds of thousands of children in North America become entangled in the legal system. Often these children testify about the alleged actions of a parent, teacher, baby-sitter, relative or neighbor. And when this happens, the case is often decided on the basis of the relative credibility of the child versus the defendant. Regardless of whether such testimony is made in forensic interviews, during preliminary hearings, or at trial, it may result in life altering decisions for all involved (Ceci & Bruck, 1995).
One of the first trials encountered in this class was that of Alfred Dreyfus, a Captain in the French military who was accused of treason for passing French intelligence to the Germans. However where many parallels can be found lies in the subsequent actions taken by the French military and legal system. Dreyfus was convicted on treason and sentenced to be transported to Guiana and serve in a penal colony. As a result he was removed from his legal proceedings, he no longer had access to his case nor any of the officials who had any power to change his case. Kafka’s depicts this process similarly in The Trial, Josef K. has very little to no access to his case and absolutely none surrounding its details, while he is not physically removed from the case he is removed from the case based on the inaccessibility of the courts, the judges and even legal counsel. Dreyfus was similarly removed from the country in order to serve his sentence and it was not until others began to p...