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Few would disagree that we have entered an age of tabloid justice - one in which the sensationalistic, and often tawdry, details of criminal cases have become the centrepiece of news coverage. This study shows just how far this situation has progresed, and with what results.
The book traces the changing relation and intense debates between law and literature in U.S. American culture, using examples from the 18th to the 20th century (including novels by Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Harper Lee, and William Gaddis). Since the early American republic, the critical representation of legal matters in literary fictions and cultural narratives about the law served an important function for the cultural imagination and legitimation of law and justice in the United States. One of the most essential questions that literary representations of the law are concerned with, the study argues, is the unstable relation between language and truth, or, more specifically, between rhetoric and evidence. In examining the truth claims of legal language and rhetoric and the evidentiary procedures and protocols which are meant to stabilize these claims, literary fictions about the law aim to provide an alternative public discourse that translates the law's abstractions into exemplary stories of individual experience. Yet while literature may thus strive to institute itself as an ethical counter narrative to the law, in order to become, in Shelley’s famous phrase “the legislator of the world”, it has to face the instability of its own relation to truth. The critical investigation of legal rhetoric in literary fiction thus also and inevitably entails a negotiation of the intrinsic value of literary evidence.
Arguing that the US has entered an era in which the mass media tend to focus on the "sensationalistic, personal, lurid, and tawdry details" of high-profile trials and investigations, the authors (political science, Union College and Purdue U., respectively) illustrate that the way in which legal information is presented by the mass media distorts the public's view of reality. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
The trial of O. J. Simpson was a sensation, avidly followed by millions of people, but it was also, in a sense, nothing new. One hundred years earlier the Lizzie Borden trial had held the nation in thrall. The names (and the crimes) may change, but the appeal is enduring—and why this is, how it works, and what it means are what Lawrence Friedman investigates in The Big Trial. What is it about these cases that captures the public imagination? Are the “headline trials” of our period different from those of a century or two ago? And what do we learn from them, about the nature of our society, past and present? To get a clearer picture, Friedman first identifies what certain headline trials have in common, then considers particular cases within each grouping. The political trial, for instance, embraces treason and spying, dissenters and radicals, and, to varying degrees, corruption and fraud. Celebrity trials involve the famous—whether victims, as in the case of Charles Manson, or defendants as disparate as Fatty Arbuckle and William Kennedy Smith—but certain high-profile cases, such as those Friedman categorizes as tabloid trials, can also create celebrities. The fascination of whodunit trials can be found in the mystery surrounding the case: Are we sure about O. J. Simpson? What about Claus von Bulow—tried, in another sensational case, for sending his wife into a coma.? An especially interesting type of case Friedman groups under the rubric worm in the bud. These are cases, such as that of Lizzie Borden, that seem to put society itself on trial; they raise fundamental social questions and often suggest hidden and secret pathologies. And finally, a small but important group of cases proceed from moral panic, the Salem witchcraft trials being the classic instance, though Friedman also considers recent examples. Though they might differ in significant ways, these types of trials also have important similarities. Most notably, they invariably raise questions about identity (Who is this defendant? A villain? An innocent unfairly accused?). And in this respect, The Big Trial shows us, the headline trial reflects a critical aspect of modern society. Reaching across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the latest outrage, from congressional hearings to lynching and vigilante justice to public punishment, from Dr. Sam Sheppard (the “fugitive”) to Jeffrey Dahmer (the “cannibal”), The Rosenbergs to Timothy McVeigh, the book presents a complex picture of headline trials as displays of power—moments of “didactic theater”" that demonstrate in one way or another whether a society is fair, whom it protects, and whose interest it serves.
An examination of the rise of tabloid television and the political, cultural, and technological changes that have enabled its success.
Before the sensational cases of Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony—before even Lizzie Borden—there was Polly Bodine, the first American woman put on trial for capital murder in our nation’s debut media circus. On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old mother Emeline Houseman and her infant daughter, Ann Eliza. In a perverse nativity, someone bludgeoned to death a mother and child in their home—and then covered up the crime with hellfire. When an ambitious district attorney charges Polly Bodine (Emelin’s sister-in-law) with a double homicide, the new “penny press” explodes. Polly is a perfect media villain: she’s a separated wife who drinks gin, commits adultery, and has had multiple abortions. Between June 1844 and April 1846, the nation was enthralled by her three trials—in Staten Island, Manhattan, and Newburgh—for the “Christmas murders.” After Polly’s legal dream team entered the fray, the press and the public debated not only her guilt, but her character and fate as a fallen woman in society. Public opinion split into different camps over her case. Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman covered her case as young newsmen. P. T. Barnum made a circus out of it. James Fenimore Cooper’s last novel was inspired by her trials. The Witch of New York is the first narrative history about the dueling trial lawyers, ruthless newsmen, and shameless hucksters who turned the Polly Bodine case into America’s formative tabloid trial. An origin story of how America became addicted to sensationalized reporting of criminal trials, The Witch of New York vividly reconstructs an epic mystery from Old New York—and uses the Bodine case to challenge our system of tabloid justice of today.
"An unrepeatable feat, a tour de force." --The Washington Post Book World In Tabloid Dreams, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler dazzles with his mastery of the short story and his empathy for eccentric and ostracized characters. Using tabloid headlines as inspiration--"Boy Born with Tattoo of Elvis," "Woman Struck by Car Turns into Nymphomaniac," and "JFK Secretly Attends Jackie Auction"--Butler moves from the fantastic to the realistic, exploring enduring concepts of exile, loss, aspiration, and the search for self. Along the way, the cast includes a woman who can see through her glass eye when it's removed from the socket, a widow who sets herself on fire after losing a baking competition, a nine-year-old hit man, and a woman who dates an extraterrestrial she met in a Walmart parking lot. Tabloid Dreams weaves a seamless tapestry of high and low culture, of the surreal, sordid, and humorously sad.
Offering a brief, accessible, and timely introduction, Policing: The Essentials, hones in on core concepts and provides strong coverage on the foundations of policing. Authors Carol A. Archbold, Carol M. Huynh, and Thomas Mrozla use contemporary scholarship to focus on the current climate of policing and criminal justice, crafting one of the most diverse and inclusive books for the policing course. With a unique chapter on police effectiveness and community policing, plus ample opportunities for critical thinking and application by the reader, Policing: The Essentials offers a close examination of what matters in policing today and provides students with the key information they need to understand modern policing practices in our society.
Playing with Fire -- Images of Discipline -- Walks of Shame -- Spectacular Trials -- What Picture Would They Use? -- What's So Special About Video? -- Filming Police -- Police and Image Maintenance -- Everyday Racism and Rudeness -- Playing (Safely) With Fire.
Justice, Crime, and Ethics, a leading textbook in criminal justice programs, examines ethical dilemmas pertaining to the administration of criminal justice and professional activities in the field. This tenth edition continues to deliver a broad scope of topics, focusing on law enforcement, legal practice, sentencing, corrections, research, crime control policy, and philosophical issues. The book’s robust coverage encompasses contentious issues such as capital punishment, prison corruption, and the use of deception in police interrogation. The tenth edition includes new material in a number of chapters including "Learning Police Ethics," "Using Ethical Dilemmas in Training Police," "Prison Corruption," "Crime and Justice Myths," "Corporate Misconduct and Ethics," "Ethics and Criminal Justice Research," and "Ethical Issues in Confronting Terrorism." The use of "Case Studies," "Ethical Dilemmas," and "Policy and Ethics" boxes continues throughout the textbook. A new feature for this edition is the inclusion of "International Perspective" boxes in a number of relevant chapters. Students of criminal justice, as well as instructors and professionals in the field, continue to rely on this thorough, dependable resource on ethical decision making in the criminal justice system.