Progress on Supreme Court Case

Progress on Supreme Court Case
As of now, I still have the majority of research and work to do on my Supreme Court case project. I have begun my research on my selected case, Miranda vs. Arizona, and completed the first of seven sections of the brief. I’ve only done some online research, so during the next week I’m going to be looking to find more sources on the case. In doing my research on this case in particular, I’ve noticed that I had to go to many different websites to get different pieces of information about the case, which is something I don’t usually have to do when researching other things…I usually find relatively the same information on all the websites that I look at. At first, I chose my case just to get a topic that no one else had, and not really knowing what to expect when I researched it. All I knew was that it had something to do with the Miranda Rights. In doing my research, I’ve learned that the case I chose was pretty interesting because people can say some dumb things when they get arrested, not knowing that they could incriminate themselves even if they didn’t do that certain crime, so it’s important to inform them that they have the right to not speak until they have a lawyer around. In this upcoming week, I plan on looking at more sources to get even more information about my case.

Facts of the case

Miranda versus Arizona.

Ernesto Miranda was arrested for robbery in March of 1963. Without having a lawyer present, "While in police custody he signed a written confession to the robbery, and to kidnapping and raping an 18-year-old woman 11 days before the robbery" (http://www.thecapras.org/mcapra/miranda/rights.html). At his trial, the lawyers used his admitted information against him to incriminate him. The problem was that while he was being interrogated by the police, he had not been informed of his right to have counsel before he answered any questions.
In trial, he was convicted of kidnapping and rape and got sentenced 20 to 30 years for each charge. His court-appointed attorney, John Flynn, appealed the case to the Arizona Supreme Court. The Court agreed with the sentencing and stressed the fact that Ernesto Miranda did not request an attorney and gave his admissions freely. There were many other cases in which the defendant or suspect had been interrogated by the police without being notified of their right to counsel such as Vignera v. New York, California v. Stewart , and Westover v. United States (http://www.oyez.org/cases/). The case was taken to the U.S. Supreme Court on the basis that the police took the individuals into interrogation without notifying them of their right to counsel or informing them of self-incrimination, violating part of the Fifth Amendment which states the right not to testify against one’s self (self-incrimination) (caselaw.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment05/).

Pacific Heights

In the movie, the new owners of the property seemed too naive to understand how to be successful landlords, even though their intentions to start off were good. They would probably be considered fine landlords if all of their tenants were respectful, had good hearts, and were willing to equally participate in the landlord/tenant relationship. However, since they got one ‘dud’ tenant who bred tons of disgusting cock roaches and refused to pay his rent, the couple was portrayed as a pair of push-overs. I don’t know what happened in the remainder of the movie, but in the portion I saw, they tried to take legal action to force out the unruly tenant, but it didn’t work. I think that there should have been a law that could have been enforced so they wouldn’t have to deal with all of that bad stuff, especially while she happened to be pregnant.

Greed is Good week 6

In some cases being greedy is good such as when you are doing it to better yourself, not at the expense of others. Greed becomes a bad thing, however, when one person’s greediness interferes with other peoples’ well being and finances.

In my opinion, Wall Street is pretty nuts. People make it a big deal out of it and then wonder why it’s so messed up. I think that if people stopped worrying so much about the stock market and what goes on there then the bad economy would pretty much handle itself sooner than it would if we keep stressing out about it so much like how we’re doing. People need to realize that saving their money and not spending it is the wrong thing to do because the economy relies on the circulation of everyone’s money. If no money is being spent, that means the companies aren’t getting paid so workers are getting laid off, which in turn, makes them have no more money to spend, and so goes the circle. It’s good to be somewhat conservative with your money, but people just need to chill out about the stock trade and live their lives as they normally would have.

I think that stock traders who give themselves million and billion dollar bonuses are fine if they are hard-working, honest people who deserve that money. It’s not okay when they give themselves major bonuses like that if it’s taking the money out of the hands of equally hard-working but poorer people.

Drugs- To Legalize or Not.

Drugs- To Legalize or Not.
I agree with the author of the article that drugs that are now illegal in the US should be legalized and that. If that happened, the demand that’s so high would be a lot less, especially from other countries. I believe that for some people who indulge in drugs, part of their attraction to those drugs is the sheer fact that the drugs are illegal and it’s an adrenaline rush for them just knowing they can get caught. Legalization of drugs would eliminate at least that aspect of appeal right there. Also, as stated in the article, if we decriminalized not only marijuana, but also others such as cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines, people who are addicted to those drugs are not only more likely, but even more encouraged to get help for their addictions in rehabilitation centers because they wouldn’t be afraid of getting exposed, caught, and put into jail for illegal drug possession. The article states that Portugal legalized drugs in 2001 and has been largely successful, and has even lowered the amount of drug users in the country.
Keeping drugs illegal doesn’t work now and it still won’t work in the future because as long as drugs are going to exist, people will be attracted to them, just like how prohibition didn’t work for alcohol; it only encouraged people to steal and be sneaky about drinking. In addition, the legalization of drugs in the US “would puncture the market for imports from Mexico and elsewhere and would eliminate much of the profit that fuels the internecine warfare in Mexico,” making the countries involved not more dangerous, but rather more safe.