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Principles of the american constitution
Principles of the american constitution
Principles of the american constitution
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Texas v. Johnson (1989) In 1984, following a protest march through the streets of Dallas, Texas against the policies of the Reagan Administration, Gregory Lee Johnson was handed an American flag. Outside the Dallas City Hall, Johnson through the flag onto the ground, poured kerosene on it, and set fire to it. Many protesters around Johnson began a chant of, "America, the red, white, and blue, we spit on you!" While many protesters agreed with what Johnson had done, there were several others who felt extremely offended. In fact, one such person felt the need to gather the remains of the flag which he then buried in his yard. The protest was a nonviolent one and no one standing nearby was hurt or threatened. At this time, 48 of our 50 states had in place laws that prohibited the public burning of the American flag. Texas, of course, was one of these. This caused Johnson to be charged with "the desecration of a venerated object." He was found guilty and faced a sentence of a $2,000 fine and one year in prison. Johnson, appalled by this decision, appealed his case to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas. This court agreed with the prior one and ruled to have his conviction stand. In response, the still angry Johnson appealed his case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. This court, unlike the previous two, found Johnson to be innocent because it found that the First Amendment protected Johnson's behavior. To arrive at this decision, the court first quickly decided that Johnson's actions feel under the First Amendment protection of free speech because it was expressive conduct. Because of this, the state would need to prove that circumstances existed which would make the state interest outweigh the First Amendment. The court found that there was not a strong enough state interest to overrule the protection of the First Amendment and overturned the previous ruling. Upset with this, The State of Texas appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court agreed to hear the case in 1988. The decision was made in 1989. In the Supreme Court, a 5-4 decision was made in favor of Johnson. They ruled that the First Amendment did, in fact, protect this action and found that the state's interest was not compelling enough to override the amendment. The majority opinion for this case was written by William J.
The evidence presented to myself and the other juror’s proves that Tyrone Washburn is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the murder of his wife, Elena Washburn. On March 12, 1979 Elena Washburn was strangled in the living room of her family’s home. Her body was then dragged to the garage, leaving a trail of blood from the living room to the place it was found. Her husband, Tyrone Washburn, found her in the family’s garage on March 13, 1979 at 1:45 A.M. When officer Dale Chambers arrived at the scene he found her lying face down in a pool of blood. The solid evidence in this case proves only one person, Tyrone Washburn, is guilty of murder.
Republicans made a last attempt to embed Negro freedom in federal law; they tried but failed to strengthen. On March 31, after many disputes and bloodshed between Democrats and Republicans, whites and Negroes, the Supreme Court sat down to hear the Colfax case. Attorney General George Williams would argue the Colfax case, he promised “he was not going to lose this case without showing the court what he could do…he wasn’t going to lose it without a fight.” Williams reminded the court of the massacre that happened in Colfax and that though Beckwith’s indictment was imperfect it was valid. Williams had to demonstrate that the constitution authorized congress to enact section 6 of the Enforcement Act, which protects whites and blacks voters from conspiracies. Williams made sure to remind the court million of people’s lives depended on the case and if they decided in favor of this law it will do a lot to bring peace and quiet to the south. But when the Supreme Court finally reached a conclusion, they were unanimous in the decision that Beckwith’s indictments were fatally flawed. Chief Justice Waite in his draft dismissed every count and not one mentioned the massacre in it. It broke whatever force the Enforcement Act
Facts: On October 3, 1974, Memphis Police Officers Hymon and Wright were dispatched to answer a “prowler inside call.” When the police arrived at the scene, a neighbor gestured to the house where she had heard glass breaking and that someone was breaking into the house. While one of the officer radioed that they were on the scene, the other officer went to the rear of the house hearing a door slam and saw someone run across the backyard. The suspect, Edward Garner stopped at a 6-feet-high fence at the edge of the yard and proceeded to climb the fence as the police officer called out “police, halt.” The police officer figured that if Garner made it over the fence he would get away and also “figured” that Garner was unarmed. Officer Hymon then shot him, hitting him in the back of the head. In using deadly force to prevent the escape of Garner, Hymon used the argument that actions were made under the authority of the Tennessee statute and pursuant to Police Department policy. Although the department’s policy was slightly more restrictive than the statute it still allowed the use of deadly force in cases of burglary. Garner’s fathers’ argument was made that his son was shot unconstitutionally because he was captured and shot possessing ten dollars that he had stolen and being unarmed showing no threat of danger to the officer. The incident was then reviewed by the Memphis Police Firearm’s Revie...
The court for this case found that the search and seizure of the stereo violated the fourth and fourteenth Amendments. The Decision was 6 votes for Hicks and 3 votes against.
According to the Justice Kagan, in the case of Florida vs. Harris, “we considered how a court should determine if the “alert” of drug-detention during a traffic stop provides probable cause to search a vehicle” (Kagan).
Johnson and his lawyers were dissatisfied with this decision and made an appeal to the Fifth Texas Supreme Judicial District. This appeal, made on May 8, 1985 would be titled as Texas vs. Johnson. The defense argued that Johnson was prosecuted in violation of the first Amendment, clearly states that no law may take away a person's freedom of speech or expression, and of the Bill of Rights and the free speech clause of the Texas Constitution. Johnson argued that in his opinion, flag burning is part of freedom o...
In an article written by a Senior student they discuss a monumental moment in Mexican American history concerning equality in the South. The student’s paper revolves around the Pete Hernandez V. Texas case in which Hernandez receives a life in prison sentence by an all white jury. The essay further discusses how Mexican Americans are technically “white” americans because they do not fall into the Indian (Native American), or black categories and because of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848. The student’s paper proceeds to discuss the goals connecting the Hernandez V. Texas case which was to secure Mexican American’s right within the fourteenth amendment [1].
The decision comes with a number of justices choosing to concur in part and dissent in part, the court said that the searches and seizures of Coolidge’s property were unconstitutional. Justice Stewart’s opinion wrote that the warrant authorized to seize his automobile was not valid because it was not issued by a “nature and detached magistrate.” Stewart also rejected the argument of New Hampshire argument to make an exception to the search warrant with “special circumstances” neither the incident to arrest doctrine nor the plain view doctrine justified the search, and that an automobile exception was also
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the U.S. Government in both cases. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment05/
The majority opinion of the court was the most accurate for this case because of the fact that Johnson was expressing his personal beliefs and opinions. The 5 to 4 decision was the most constitutional and well thought through judgment. Johnson was not threatening the United States in any way, let alone the people of the United States. Although society may find expressive events hostile, the government cannot ban it because it’s expressive conduct and it underlies in one’s First Amendment rights. The majority opinion was the most constitutionally accurate, but one may think, does our Constitution need revising?
In the case Lawrence v. Texas (539 U.S. 558, 2003) which was the United States Supreme Court case the criminal prohibition of the homosexual pederasty was invalidated in Texas. The same issue has been already addressed in 1989 in the case Bowers v. Hardwick, however, the constitutional protection of sexual privacy was not found at that time. Lawrence overruled Bowers and held that sexual conduct was the right protected by the due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The effects of the ruling were quite widespread and led to invalidation of the similar laws throughout the United States that tried to criminalize the homosexual activity of adults which were acting in privacy. The case attracted much of the public attention and quite a large number of briefs were filed in the cases.
Flag Burning can be and usually is a very controversial issue. Many people are offended by the thought of destroying this country's symbol of liberty and freedom. During a political protest during the 1984 Republican Convention, Gregory Lee Johnson was arrested for burning an American flag. Years later in 1989, Johnson got the decision overturned by the United States Supreme Court. In the same year, the state of Texas passed the Flag Protection Act, which prohibited any form of desecration against the American flag. This act provoked many people to protest and burn flags anyway. Two protestors, Shawn Eichman and Mark Haggerty were charged with violating the law and arrested. Both Eichman and Haggerty appealed the decision because the law was inconsistent with the first amendment to the Constitution. The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances is protected by the first amendment of the Constitution. Burning American flags and other such actions are not treasonous and should no be treated as so, as long as these actions are done to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The Tennessee v. Garner case impacted law enforcement agencies today by utilizing the Fourth Amendment right of not using deadly force to prevent a suspect from fleeing unless the officer is in imminent danger of their life. Consequently, before this was set into place, an officer had the right to use deadly force on a fleeing suspect by all means.” The first time the Court dealt with the use of force was in Tennessee v. Garner, in Garner, a police officer used deadly force despite being "reasonably sure" that the suspect was an unarmed teenager "of slight build" who was running away from him” (Gross,2016). Whereas, with Graham v. Conner case was surrounded around excessive force which also has an impact on law enforcement agencies in today’s society as well. “All claims that law enforcement officers have used excessive force deadly or not in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other “seizure” of s free citizen should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and its “reasonableness” standard” (Doerner,2016).
Bounds v. Smith was argued November 1, 1976 and the case was decided April 27, 1977 by THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS for the Fourth circuit. MARSHALL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, WHITE, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. POWELL, J., filed a concurring opinion. BURGER, C.J., filed a dissenting opinion. STEWART, J., post, and REHNQUIST, J filed dissenting opinions, in which BURGER, C.J., joined.
This case was brought to the Supreme Court with Plessey’s argument being that his 13th and 14th Amendments was being violated. But Louisiana argued that the 14th Amendment states that everyone is to be treated equally and that is exactly what happened. They said that the cars were separate but equal and that abided by the Constitution while keeping the Jim Crow laws. The Supreme Court decided that no law was violated and took the state’s side. The Court upheld Plessey’s conviction, and ruled that the 14th Amendment guarantees the right to “equal facilities,” not the “same facilities.” In this ruling, the Supreme Court created the principle of “separate but equal,”(“Judicial Review”,