Throughout world history and American history. Extra Judicial violence has become a hot topic in America as it has lead to some divisive issues and debates. In today’s society extra judicial violence has become embedded into our American culture due to the idea of extra judicial violence being necessary has been pushed by pop culture in America, the legal system as well our cultural structure. Extra judicial violence can be used in situations where law enforcement and legal system fall short, or incases that we now know are abhorrently wrong. The film “Dirty Harry” allowed us to understand how Hollywood promotes and gives superhero like attributes to vigilantes. The section of the course regarding stand your ground laws allows us to understand the deep rooted culture self defense has in America that even pre-dates our country. The third part of the course allows us to understand the dark side of extra judicial violence.
In the beginning of the semester, we watched “Dirty Harry” this film really made a case for Dirty Harry who was an inspector with the San Fransisco Police Department. The film makers paint Dirty Harry as a man who must take on crime in the city by himself. Not only is Dirty Harry battling a criminal murderer but Dirty Harry and the Police Department as well as the City’s Mayor seem to come into conflict with each other. Harry is seen as a man of morals who is going above and beyond to keep the city that he loves safe. The Writers of the film make it clear in many cases that certain shortcuts must be made. Criminals or those accused of crimes are guaranteed certain rights, when the life of a woman was in danger Dirty Harry ignored the rights of the antagonist in order to try saving the woman.
In the second section of the course, two writing pieces that I found to be interesting to me personally as well as extremely relevant to the course. Miller’s piece in Duke University Law Journal as well as Te-Nehisi Coates’ piece in The Atlantic both show us how self defense laws and stand your ground laws have evolved and developed over time . They also reveal to the audience what the purpose of these laws were. Reading both texts allow for readers to make a clear connection between the two pieces and connect self defense laws and stand your ground laws to the reason they were passed and whether there was an underlying cause to why they were passed. Both articles are able to point out that self defense laws were made to keep power in the hands of those who already held it and to keep those who held no power in their place. Coates does a good job in pointing out that by enabling self defense laws the people in power created/reinforced a pariah class.
In the third section of the course, we examined the Miburn case, where three civil rights workers were lynched on a trip to the south and even law enforcement was involved in the lynching. After, we were told to choose a lynching that occurred in the United States and our final essay was on that lynching. After many in class exercises to conduct research on multiple cases, I chose the Brandon McClelland case. I chose this case because I wanted to do a case that occurred recently and try to understand some of the current problems with race relations in America. Researching this was a good opportunity for me to understand the other side of people taking justice into their own hands. In the first part of the course we got to see “heroes” going out side of the law to achieve justice for good causes. In this last part I was able to get a gruesome look into how extra judicial justice can be taken the exact opposite way and done in a horrible way. This was able to change my view on whether we should allow extra judicial violence because if its allowed for “good reasons” whose not to say that it won’t be allowed for “bad reasons”. Good and Bad are just relative terms. What may be good or acceptable in one part of the world or even country may be considered taboo or bad in another.
Extra Judicial violence can be seen as a source of good or a source for bad. If we allow extra judicial violence to occur it is inevitable that both of these would occur. Extra judicial violence is a spectrum with one side being for helping the judicial system in its shortcomings for good such as the film “Dirty Harry” or for horrible reasons with prejudice personal beliefs inciting violence on another human being. The theme of this course really helped me understand the world we live in and how personal beliefs and morals can conflict with the law and how the law and morals/personal beliefs come into contact with each other. The theme of the course will always come to mind when thinking about self defense situations. Despite biased media coverage from both conservative and liberal sources I will now be able to look at the situation within the context of the law and make my own judgement based on the facts.
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