Recent orders
The sports trial
The Murder Trial of OJ Simpson.
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Introduction
The sports trial of OJ Simpson is among the most famous trials in the history of sports. Although Simpson is a renowned pro-footballer, people will forever remember him for his involvement in the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. OJ Simpson was charged with their murders in 1994 embarking on a rather controversial trial that caught the attention of the entire world. Simpson was later acquitted of the two murders after 252 days of trial. The purpose of this essay is to weigh in on the facts surrounding OJ Simpson’s alleged murder of his estranged ex-wife and her friend. Further, the text assesses the outcome of the decision made in the case as well as any strange information that changed the direction of the case.
About the Murder Case
On June 12th, 1994, Nicole Simpson and her friend were found stabbed to death on the night of 12th June 1994 in Los Angeles outside Simpson’s condominium. This after Nicole and Simpson had attended their daughter’s dance recital and the family proceeded to go eat at the Mezzaluna restaurant before heading to the condominium. The neighbors testified that they had heard intense barking coming from outside during the night and that one of the dog walkers living in the block has come across Brown’s dog in distress and covered in blood (Sayers, 2020). The two bodies were discovered by the couple that came to return Brown body. The scene had a lot of blood with Brown found lying face down at the foot of the stairs. She had multiple neck and head injuries. The front door was open pointing to the lack of forced entry. Her friend Goldman’s body also lay close to the tree by the fence with several neck and body injuries signifying defensive wounds and struggle. Simpson was arraigned formerly on July 22nd, 1994 where he entered a plea of not guilty before the trial formerly beginning in January with Ilto Lance as the presiding judge.
The outcome of Decision Made
The jury started deliberating on 2nd October 1995 and in less than four hours, they had reached a verdict. Lance, the presiding judge however delayed making the announcement till the following day. OJ Simpson was found not guilty of the murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown on 3rd October. Following the verdict, the public pools were segregated along racial lines. The white population was dismayed by the decision made by the jury while most African Americans supported the ruling. For the black population, Simpson witnessing Simpson being acquitted in a system that systematically discriminated against people of color was a victory. Although Simpson was acquitted, the victim’s families sued him for wrongful death in 1996. Four months later, the jury found Simpson responsible for the death of the two victims in a civil trial awarding their families $33.5 million in damages (Boban, 2018). At the time, most cable television networks devoted time to the public opinions and speculations of people about the case. Millions of people followed the proceedings of the trial throughout the day with the main figures of the case becoming instant celebrities.
Information that Changed the Case.
Simpson’s defense was mainly founded on grounds that most of the police officers in the Loss Angeles police department were being racist and that the glove presented as evidence was too small to fit Simpson’s arm. This is after Simpson tried to fit the glove in the courtroom during the trial. Mark Fuhrman, the detective said to have discovered the bloody leather in the scene of the murder was particularly deemed racist. The prosecution on the other hand built their case on grounds that domestic violence had ensued after the couple had divorced which they pointed to as the motive of the murder. Worth noting, OJ Simpson was represented by a team of attorneys called the dream team that included Robert Blasier, Lee Bailey, Robert Shapiro, Shawn Holley, and Allan Dershowitz. The defense team initially alleged that three exhibits were planted by the police who had the intention of framing him. However, in an eventful twist, it was argued that all blood evidence was planted by racist police officers. Six individuals were accused of participating in a scheme to frame Simpson including Mark Fuhrman, Thano Peratis (prison nurse), Dennis Fung(criminalist), Colin Yamauchi, Phillip Vannater (detective), and Andrea Mazzola. In the closing remarks, the defense referred to Vannater and Fuhrman as ‘twins of deception’ and called upon the jury to remember Fuhrman as ‘ the man that discovered the glove and Vannater as the “man who planted the blood evidence’. The bloody glove was the last exhibit that was discovered at the scene. Unlike back gate and the sock, the prosecution provided no eyewitness or physical evidence to support their claims. Defense attorney Lee Bailey suggested that Fuhrman collected the glove at the murder scene, picked it with a stick, and placed it in a stored it in a plastic bag which he hid in his socks when he drove to the condominium in the company of Detective Phillips, Lange, and Vannater. Fuhrman would later plant the glove at the scene his motive being racism or wanting to come out as the hero in this high-profile case. Although the prosecution denied this, Simpson was granted a not-guilty verdict.
Conclusion.
The high-profile and highly controversial murder trial of OJ Simpson hit the media in October 1994. The renowned pro-footballer was accused of murdering his estranged ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman who were found gruesomely murdered on 12th June 1994 in Simpson’s condominium. Simpson was later acquitted of the two murders after 252 days of trial. Four months later, the jury found Simpson responsible for the death of the two victims in a civil trial awarding their families $33.5 million in damages. The bloody glove and conspiracy allegations against OJ Simpson completely changed the outcome of the case in which the jury found Simpson not guilty of both murders.
References
Boban, M. (2018). Race Issues in the OJ Simpson Case–Analysis of Alexander and Karaszewski’s American Crime Story (Doctoral dissertation, University of Zadar. Department of English.).
Sayers, H. (2020). If the Suit Doesn’t Fit: Marcia Clark and the OJ Simpson Trial. Women Leading Change: Case Studies on Women, Gender, and Feminism, 5(1), 48-59.
A review of journal on nervous and mental disease
A review of journal on nervous and mental disease
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Introduction
The study of counseling psychology entails details of the person history which helps in bringing out the underlying issues about their state of health. Nervous and mental diseases are ranked amongst the troublesome and expensive of human diseases when it comes to management. Mostly psychologists are concerned with the study of nervous and mental diseases of humans due to humanity’s highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness. Most schools of thought discussing on psychology have identified five key themes predominantly featured in these definitions: states of consciousness, higher or ultimate potential, transcendence, and the spiritual. Though the field is big and touches on many aspect, the authors working on the journal of nervous and mental diseases have helped in putting all needed information under one volume(Budde,2010,pp 10-17).
What authors were trying to do
Psychological authors had a very strong insight when it came to patients especially the post therapeutic times. Authors were majorly concerned with influence on the patients rather the type of psychotherapy used by the therapist. Accordingly, most contemporary learning centers of psychotherapy laid emphasis on the healing power of the therapeutic relationship.
This edition was extensively discussed and even a debate held on psychotherapy where a former statistician studying primarily signs and manifestation with depressed patients, reported that ;psychotherapy could be more effective compared with placebo, he also alluded that no single treatment mode had the edge in efficacy, finally, he made an assertion that the factors common to varied psychotherapies, such as whether or not the therapist had established a good working alliance with the patient, accounted much more to the discrepancies in outcomes than modalities specific techniques.Whilst some report on the some postulated that by attempting to manualize or program treatment,psychotherapists may actually had been reducing in efficacy, although the unplanned approach of many psychotherapists could not appeal to clients motive to solve their state of health through the application of specific techniques in addition to their traditional approaches(Wilber,2004,pp39-48)
While much early work on this subject was generated from a psychodynamic perspective, authors from other orientations have since written a lot on it and It has been discovered that their alignment seem to predict treatment adherence and concordance together with the outcome across a range of patients diagnoses and treatment modalities.
Also authors aimed at bringing to fore the statistical power of the therapeutic approaches and the extratherapeutic influences like client motivation and the severity of the problems due to specific techniques used.
How the authors did it
Needless to say majority of the authors actually came from the some field of practice, and accessing both the secondary and primary data was easy. For instance the works on eating disorders-a disease, which had widely been written on and many packages published mainly by the American family physician, in collaboration with the American Psychiatric Association. But this doesn’t mean the authors never put into consideration various aspects that to some extent serve as predisposing factors to neural and mental disease causation. A good analogy is when authors consider personality traits especially those associated with the increased problems on eating disorders.
At this point authors puts it that during adolescence these characters become intensified due to a wide range of cultural and physiological influences like, hormonal changes mostly related to puberty, stress associated with the approaching demands of socio-cultural influences and maturity and perceived expectations, especially in areas that concern body image.
The writers also used parameters on environment to exemplify their work. to the environment encompasses many aspects like the Child maltreatment, Social isolation, Cultural pressure, Peer pressure just to name a few. According to them, these factors do not necessarily have an immediate cause on neural and mental diseases but act gradually to produce effects.
Finally is worthy noting, that the successes of this work by the writers was accomplished through various collaborative work .For instance, they worked hand in hand field practitioners like psychologists ,peer group counselors and researchers who provided valuable information that saw this work perfectly completed(Azziz,2009,pp27-34)
What authors found out
The authors finding were based entirely on the treatment and responses thereof. Where by they argued that though diseases could easily be managed, different patients who sought out on medication had individualized feelings and behaviors instigated by their own thoughts instead of external forces such as other people, events, or situations; the idea was
to change how an individual thinks and responds to a situation even if the situation itself remained unchanged. In line with this, authors too touched on the need by patients to accept and commitment to therapy which they considered a center-stage towards a successful management.
Ideally, many patients showed some fear in the course of psychotherapeutic management whilst some patients were intentionally hid in the homes for fear of the untold stigmatization. Furthermore authors found that in the increasingly researchful and scientific world it was possible to counter to cognitive disorders by use of cognitive remediation therapy, which is based on a set of cognitive drills and some compensatory interventions used to enhance cognitive functioning(Mertizner,2005,pp117-129)
Personal view on the author’s findings
In the journal it is further postulated that as one the interventions to remedy this increasingly problematic conditions, religion should not be ignored and the use of cognitive remediation therapy. This must be fur fetched ideas and doctrines of many colorful personalities, in the name of spiritual teachers in the Western countries , such as Alice Bailey or Gurdjieff which have lately and oftenly been entrenched into the transpersonal psychology mainstream scene. This assertion is, generally, seen as dangerous to the aspiration of transpersonal psychologists to mount on a firm and respectable academic status. Since most psychologists incline to an eclectic approach.
Authors’ conclusion
The advocates of Transpersonal psychology most at times infer to themselves as the fourth wave surge of psychology which according to Maslow,even lives beyond
the self power of Humanistic psychology. Most authors reframes it that unlike the other schools of psychology i.e. psychoanalysis, behaviorism and humanistic psychology, which to some extend deny transcended part of soul, transpersonal psychology encompasses the whole spectrum which humans develop from prepersonality to transpersonality. In conclusion the authors lays it that transpersonal psychology could be considered the most integrated complete psychology, in other words it is referred to as a positive psychology par excellence.
Finally the authors view this from personality to transpersonality, neuroscience to Nirvana, mind to meditation, it is a complete a fully fletched science for all round treatment
and development.
References
Azziz, Robert (2009). Synchronicity and the Transformation of the Ethical in Jungian
Psychology, New Jersey: Greenwood
Budde, Stephanne L, Howard, Esther N.(2010). A journal on counseling psychology,
Vol 57(4), Issue 6, p400.
Mertinzer, Ralph (2005). . The Expansion of Consciousness, paperback, Berkeley, CA: Green
Earth Foundation & Regent Press
Wilber, Ken (2004). Let’s Nuke the Transpersonalists: A Response to Albert Ellis. Journal of
Counseling & Development, vol 67(3), Issue 7, p147.
A review of First-year college performance research article
Article Reviews
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A review of ‘First-year college performance’ research article
Background
When students join colleges and universities, various issues affect their performance. Their performance may either improve or deteriorate. Parents are faced with a problem of choosing between home education and public school education. This research article talks about the various issues that contribute to each decision made by various parents and guardians. It begins with the recent past, within the past thirty years, whereby there has been a significant growth of parents opting to educate their children at home than enrolling them to public schools (Gloeckner, 2007). The research points out an estimated number of these students were 1.6 million and estimated to grow by seven percent by the end of the year. it means that by 2010, the number had grown to about three million. It is possible to review the truth behind this research including any failures and accomplishments involved. The research method used, the research beneficiaries to education as well as its role to educational psychology would be analyzed as well.
The research background talks of the past difficulties in education that are related to the current trends in education such as the legal issues in education and the pressure behind parents’ choice to train their children at home. It also talks of the statistics on facts such as the initial state and the associated growth in the number of children enrolled in public schools versus those educated at home (Gloeckner, 2007). There is also a discussion on legal issue associated with such trends in education throughout the United States. There is a subject of home advocates challenging the existing regulations by both the school board officials and the state policy officials. The irony in it is that the same advocates had passed through public colleges and universities but are centrally advocating or something they have no experience in (Gloeckner, 2007). There is no any religious point of view about the subject.
The research further goes on to point some other researches that proves home school students and graduates to be better than their public school counterparts. Such evidence argues that home schoolchildren do better in several exams that are nationally standardized than their peers in public schools. Such generalized exams include Iowa basic skills test and Stanford Achievement Tests. This happens at almost all grade levels. These are late use the basic variable of the research (Bartle, 2012).
The first year performance in academic exams was a major subject in the research. Conducting three empirical studies, it focused on correcting the fact that policy makers in education and the higher education board had little knowledge about the home education positive side. An instance is the outperformance of the public school college students by their peers in home schooling colleges in an ACT English subject. In another aspect of the empirical studies, home college students performed better than Fulltime College students did in both mathematics and reading. This was done in an Academic Skill Program in Texas. The third empirical test was based on insignificant differences between home college students and their peers in traditional schools, both in public and private colleges. A test done on an English test showed all poor and excellent performance extremes in both categories (Gloeckner, 2007).
Purpose
The study was mainly purposed to determine the differences that existed in traditional high school graduates and home schools graduates (Gloeckner, 2007). The major tools used were measures in grades, point averages credits, ACT test Scores and point averaging.
Research Method
It was basically as descriptive qualitative type of research that would describe the strengths and weaknesses of each side of argument. It generated various null hypotheses that would determine the existence of differences between the home school graduates and the high school graduates. The null hypotheses were based on grade point averages, college retention for the first year students, credit hours earned and ACT Tests scores in English, mathematics, reading science and reasoning as well as first year grade average points. It consisted a random sample of 53 students from Colorado and 53 students randomly chosen from homes schooling students. This means that it incorporated a bit of quantitative research methods (Bartle, 2012).
Data collection
In data collection, test scores were used. This included tests in English, Mathematics, reading, Science and reasoning, as well as basic skills test. This was done in phases with the first phase consisting of first year students and their academic performance. This was done by measuring their point averages first, seconded by cases of retention and then the credits earned. The ACT test score was found to be the most effective (Bartle, 2012). This was as well evident in past researches.
The Analysis
In analyzing the research finding, a thorough comparison was made from the performance shown by the home schooling students and students in the traditional high colleges sampled from Colorado College. The four dependent variable used to measure the findings were grade point averages, ACT test scores, retention and credits earned. This was done on the sampled students within their first college education year. The variables were used to give any statistical evidence of the existence of difference between the two groups of students (Bartle, 2012). Secondary variable established in the study were people diversities such as gender, religion, race and ethnicity and the type of college, university or middle level college.
Results of the research
In the research, it was found that there were no significant differences between home school students and college students with respect to the basic variable, which included point averages, retention rates, and credit scores. It was also found that race never affected the performance of students whether in the traditional collages or schooling at home. At some point, the home students showed some statistical significance in performance in the science and reasoning tests. It means that despite the location of study, a student may not be affected very much by the environment although socializing with other students of various diversities is important.
The findings stand as an encouragement to students who do their schooling at home. Parents to these students should as well gain courage that their children are not absorbing inferior form of education. The results of the research were found to show higher scores by home schooling students in almost all categories (Tynjälä, 2012). There could be reasons behind these especially moral issues such as peer influence and involvement in bad moral practices. The home school graduates were proven equally ready for collage as high school graduates. It is therefore necessary for a support on home schooling, both religiously and politically (Tynjälä, 2012).
The research plays a major role in educational psychology. The mind that people have concerning education quality and student performance is doomed in the research. Most researchers had no clue of the possibilities that home schooling students could be at any aspect better than it is the case with those in the traditional schools and colleges. Their perspective of thinking forget about other disadvantages associated with the traditional schooling system such as poor moral practices such as drug abuse and sexual immorality among others that could result to their poor academic performance. The research shows that education requires a settled mind, a mind that is fully set for acquiring knowledge and innovations (Tynjälä, 2012). A student can get educational knowledge from any environment provided they are willing to absorb such kind of knowledge. This is the major reason behind the existence of no significant difference between traditional high school graduates in the United States and the home school graduates of the same category in the same country.
References
Bartle, P. (2012, July 13). RESEARCH METHODS:Various Kinds. Retrieved October 25, 2012, from Kinds of Research Methods: http://cec.vcn.bc.ca/cmp/modules/rsh-krm.htm
Gloeckner, P. J. (2007). Sample Article from the Mensa research Journal. Retrieved October 25, 2012, from MRJ Sample Article: http://www.mensafoundation.org/what-we-do/mensa-research-journal/mrj-sample-article/
Tynjälä, P. (2012). Educational Research Review. The Journal of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) Volume 7, Issue 2 , 79-164.