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Essay on lizzie borden case
Essay on lizzie borden case
Essay on lizzie borden case
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Unfortunately crime and murder is an issue in all areas of the country. Trials take place every day from a basic traffic offense to capital murder and the offender’s consequences depend on the jury. The jury consist of ordinary people that live an ordinary life. When faced with these trials, the decision making process is not easy. Some cases may hit home for many of the jurors so when deciding one’s fate does not make the process easy. The court case of Lizzie Borden is a story of a young girl who took an axe to her mother then to her father, the evidence led straight to her and she was later found not guilty by a stunned jury.
A disturbing head line on August 4, 1892 read, “Shocking Crime: A Venerable Citizen and his Aged Wife Hacked to Pieces in Their Own Home.” The murder was the word on the street for a few days because no one had been charged. It was just a short two days later that evidence led to thirty three year old Lizzie Borden, the daughter of Andrew Borden and step-mother Abby Borden. At the time the Boston Daily Globe had reported that Lizzie and her step-mother Abb...
There is lots of evidence in the Lizzie Borden murders, but is it enough to say Lizzie Borden killed Mr. and Mrs. Borden? Mr. and Mrs. Borden were killed in their home on August 4th 1892. Their daughter Lizzie Borden was the suspected killer. She was found to be innocent, yet many people still think that Lizzie borden murdered her parents that day. There is a lot of evidence that points to Lizzie being the killer. A lot of things she did and said were very suspicious. Lizzie Borden is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Imagine being wrongfully trialled for the murders of your father and stepmother. Well, this was Lizzie Borden’s reality in the notorious 19th century case. In August, 1892, the gruesome murders of Andrew and Abby Borden took place in a small town named Fall River. Because Lizzie Borden was believed to have a lot to gain with the murders of her parents, she was the only one accused of being the murder. With this case, I believe the council was right for pleading Lizzie as innocent. The public and police tried to use theories against her in court to prove she was guilty. With the whole public against her, Lizzie still stood strong and was proven innocent for the murders.
Billy Joel once sang, “Only the good die young”. In life, it is true, the young and innocent seem to touch more lives around us than anyone else. In the Casey Anthony trial, Anthony was a suspect in the murder of her daughter Caylee. Caylee’s life shouldn’t be counted in years, it should be counted by how many lives she affected, the love she has gained, and the support the country has given her to find out what really happened. In the play, Twelve Angry Men, a boy killed his father; however, both cases were challenged by the obvious and the abstruse evidence. Large cities towards the east coast, in 1982, Twelve Angry Men, and 2008, Casey Anthony Trial, affiliated with two major trials able to modify the lives of the living and the dead. For that reason, during the Casey Anthony case, jurors were conflicted throughout the trial.
The evidence between witnesses seeing Lizzie buy poison, washing a brown stained dress, her inconsistencies in the alibis, and her lacking of emotion all pointed to Lizzie Borden’s guilt. Jacob applied society’s outlook on an 1800’s American women as frail, feeble-minded, morally driven individuals who are incapable of a planned murder, to support her argument that Lizzie, no matter how guilty she may have been, would not be convicted of murder. Convicting Lizzie of murder meant opposing the established woman stereotypes which endangered the cohesive mindset of
The Lizzie Borden case has mystified and fascinated those interested in crime forover on hundred years. Very few cases in American history have attracted as much attention as the hatchet murders of Andrew J. Borden and his wife, Abby Borden. The bloodiness of the acts in an otherwise respectable late nineteenth century domestic setting is startling. Along with the gruesome nature of the crimes is the unexpected character of the accused, not a hatchet-wielding maniac, but a church-going, Sunday-school-teaching, respectable, spinster-
Guilty or not guilty? This the key question during the murder trial of a young man accused of fatally stabbing his father. The play 12 Angry Men, by Reginald Rose, introduces to the audience twelve members of a jury made up of contrasting men from various backgrounds. One of the most critical elements of the play is how the personalities and experiences of these men influence their initial majority vote of guilty. Three of the most influential members include juror #3, juror #10, and juror #11. Their past experiences and personal bias determine their thoughts and opinions on the case. Therefore, how a person feels inside is reflected in his/her thoughts, opinions, and behavior.
In the United States, jury trials are an important part of our court system. We rely heavily on the jury to decide the fate of the accused. We don’t give a second thought to having a jury trial now, but they were not always the ‘norm’.
Patty Hearst was a normal 19 year old girl, living in an apartment with her fiance and attending university in Berkeley, California, until one day her life, and the lives of everyone around her changed forever. On the evening of February 4, 1974, some members of the left-wing radical group called the Symbionese Liberation Army barged into Hearst’s home armed with guns, and beat up her fiance before kidnapping Hearst and bringing her to their house where she was kept blindfolded in a closet for 59 days. While locked in the closet, Patty Hearst was verbally and sexually abused and she was denied the use of even a toilet or toothbrush if she didn’t tell them that she agreed with the group’s ideas and beliefs. It is believed that while being locked in the closet like this, Patty was being brainwashed by the SLA and that she may have even developed Stockholm Syndrome, a condition in which a person who was kidnapped starts to empathise with their captor, and even starts defending them. This is how the Symbionese Liberation Army convinced Patty Hearst to join their group. They released an audio tape to the public in which Patty Hearst said she was changing her name to Tania and that she had decided to join the SLA. She then helped the SLA rob a bank and steal an ammunition belt from a sports store. After this, she started travelling around the country with two members of the SLA named John and Emily Harris, to try avoid being captured by the police. During this time, the police found a house where some members of the SLA were hiding out. Attempts to make the SLA members surrender ended up in a massive gunfight, ultimately ending up in the deaths of 6 SLA members. The FBI eventually found and arrested Patty Hearst on September 18, 1975. T...
A jury is a panel of citizens, selected randomly from the electoral role, whose job it is to determine guilt or innocence based on the evidence presented. The Jury Act 1977 (NSW) stipulates the purpose of juries and some of the legal aspects, such as verdicts and the right of the defence and prosecution to challenge jurors. The jury system is able to reflect the moral and ethical standards of society as members of the community ultimately decide whether the person is guilty or innocent. The creation of the Jury Amendment Act 2006 (NSW) enabled the criminal trial process to better represent the standards of society as it allowed majority verdicts of 11-1 or 10-2, which also allowed the courts to be more resource efficient. Majority verdicts still ensure that a just outcome is reached as they are only used if there is a hung jury and there has been considerable deliberation. However, the role of the media is often criticized in relation to ensuring that the jurors remain unbiased as highlighted in the media article “Independent Juries” (SMH, 2001), and the wide reporting of R v Gittany 2013 supports the arguments raised in the media article. Hence, the jury system is moderately effective in reflecting the moral and ethical standards of society, as it resource efficient and achieves just outcomes, but the influence of the media reduces the effectiveness.
First of all, I’d like to greatly thank the jury for coming and serving on this trial. Today, Mr. James King is being tried of the felony murder of Mr. Nesbitt. Mr. Nesbitt’s death is a sad truth to his family and his community. However, to place Mr. King as the murderer without solid evidence is preposterous. Remember, I’d like to remind the jury that if there is any reasonable doubt in the claim of Mr. King, you must vote not-guilty. I urge you to realise that by placing Mr. King in jail for 25 years to life, you will be compromising this young man’s entire future. I hope you make an informed decision to keep Mr. King out of jail.
On the night of December 26, 1996, six year old Jonbenet Ramsey was murdered in her home. To this day, her murderer remains unknown. Over the past twenty years, there have been many theories and speculations on what happened that winter night. Soon after the story made its way into headlines everywhere, the public was outraged. People believed that Jonbenet’s parents were to blame for her death. Many people still believe that to this day. Regardless of who the killer was, this case showed how wealth, beauty, and massive amounts of media attention can affect the way a crime is handled.
On November 29, 2004 Nancy Seaman, an award winning elementary school teacher, was put on trial for the murder of her husband Robert “Bob” Seaman. On May 10th of that year, Nancy hit her husband sixteen times with a hatchet and then preceded to stab him twenty-one times with a kitchen knife. She then cleaned herself up and then went to work as usual. After she returned from her job, Nancy bleached, painted, and scrubbed to clean the garage where she had killed her husband. Then, she wrapped up Bob’s body in a tarp and put it in the trunk of her car. The interesting point of the case is not finding out who killed Robert Seaman, but what the circumstances were for committing the crime.
Modern society has become emotionally numb and drastically morbid. It is proven by the fact that negative headlines sell better than positive ones. The same can be said of the human tendency to accept negative information about someone more readily than positive information. The writer of the article “Lizzie Borden: Her School and Later Life – A Noble Woman, Though Retiring”, published in The Boston Herald, advocates for Lizzie Borden’s innocence, despite the human tendency to reject positive information about an individual. Lizzie Borden was being accused of murder and the writer sought to prove, through an extensive analysis of her appearance, that Lizzie could not be guilty. The author’s use of faulty logic, due to the lack of substantial
The murder of Freda was an emotional case in which her soon to be husband murders his pregnant fiance. According to the document, “Sex and the All-American Boy”, Dorothy Kilgallen says “They shuffled into the jury box and remained on their feet. They shifted their bodies nervously, ducked their hands into their pockets, or kept them behind their backs”(368). The trial featured many emotional moments including the father of the deceased child to leave the room in frustration after letters written by Robert to his daughter were read out loud. The love Robert proclaimed in the letters were false. The emotions were unbearable. The twelve jurors had to live with the fact that they sentenced a twenty two year old man who could have had a future to his death. Even the detective we burst into tears because he knew Robert his whole life and couldn 't understand why he did what he did. According to “Trial By Jury Or By Magistrates” by B. T. Harris, he proclaims, “MORE than any other forensic matter, perhaps, the right to jury trial is capable of arousing deep emotions”(184). Other authors such as Harris also agree that some trials should not be taken to juries because they are too emotional. It is hard to keep emotions inside when dealing with an emotional case such as the murder of Freda and her unborn
Matthews presents a description of the expectations of a juror and how women are excluded from being a juror, without sound reason. The reasoning behind American courts