United States Courts
Assignment 2: United States Courts james mikes
Professor Robert Hammes
August 23, 2013
FOOTBALL STAR
On July 8, 2002, 16-year-old Brian Banks, a blossoming football star at Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, California, was attending summer school and anticipating his senior season on the football team. He had verbally accepted a four-year scholarship to play football at the University of Southern California. Shortly after 11:00 a.m., the 6-foot-4-inch, 225-pound Banks requested a pass to leave the classroom to use the telephone. On his way down the hall, he saw 15-year-old Wanetta Gibson, whom he had known from middle school, leaving the bathroom. On January 3, 2003, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office charged him with two counts of forcible rape and one count of sodomy with a special circumstance of kidnapping. Facing a potential prison term of 41 years to life, Banks pleaded no contest on July 8, 2003. He was sentenced to six years in prison. Banks served five years in prison and then was released on parole with an ankle monitor, he was required to register as a sex offender. On May 24, 2012, the conviction was set aside and the charges against Banks, 26, were dismissed at the request of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Brentford Ferreira. In 2013, the Long Beach Unified School District won a $2.6 million default judgment against Gibson. Justice was severed after a man spent six years of his life incarcerated that can’t be given back. This falls back on the high school where this event took place, for the lack of security in the school. Wanetta Gibson having to pay 2.6 million back to the school for false acquisition against Brian is justified. This case shows the true flaws in the justice system and how imperfect humans can be on judgment.
JENA 6 Five members of the Jena Six pleaded, no contest to misdemeanor simple battery and won't serve jail time, ending a case that thrust a small Louisiana town into the national spotlight and sparked a massive civil rights demonstration. The five, standing quietly surrounded by their lawyers, were sentenced to seven days unsupervised probation and fined $500. It was a far less severe end to their cases than seemed possible when the six students were initially charged with attempted murder in the 2006 attack on Justin Barker, a white classmate. They became known as the "Jena Six," after the central Louisiana town where the beating happened.
As part of the deal, one of the attorneys read a statement from the five defendants all of whom are black in which they said they knew of nothing Barker had done to provoke the attack. Charges against Carwin Jones, Jesse Ray Beard, Robert Bailey Jr., Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw had previously been reduced from attempted murder to aggravated second-degree battery. All but Shaw were assessed $500 in court costs. The judge did not tack that punishment on to Shaw's case because he stayed in jail for almost seven months, unable to raise bail, following his initial arrest. The matter at hand started with the noose hanging, the young man that was assaulted didn’t happen the day noose was seen. Therefore the six young men planned before hand and received a lighter charge, because people marched in their favor and the media played a big role in the case. “Simple battery is a misdemeanor offense and carries up to 6 months in jail and fines reaching $1,000.” LA Code RS 14:35 This case is one of the most controversial case in American history, due to the overall outcome.
David Ranta was convicted of killing a Jews rabbi Chaskel Werzberger in Williamsburg on February 8, 1990 in a botched robbery attempt of a diamond courier. The recently created Conviction Integrity Unit of the Brooklyn District Attorney's office determined after a year-long investigation that witnesses were coached and police mishandled evidence. Ranta had proclaimed his innocence from the start. Investigators
