Michael Brown Trial Analysis

On August 9th, 2014, Michael Brown, an African American 18 year old male, was shot to death by a white male police officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, causing nationwide protests and violent riots in Ferguson. After two weeks, these riots subdued, but two months later the protests resumed when the grand jury decided not to indict Wilson. The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee also has race as a substantial factor. In the story, African American Tom Robinson is accused of raping a white girl and arrested. He is unjustly found guilty and ends up being shot by prison guards when he tries to escape. There is a clear connection between To Kill a Mockingbird and the Michael Brown trial for several reasons. Three of these reasons
After the outcome of the Michael Brown case, violent riots erupted in Ferguson. Although many people were infuriated, many others agreed with the court that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Wilson. This was similar to how the community reacted to the Tom Robinson case. Many characters such as Atticus, Jem, Maudie, and members of the black community were angry with the outcome. While some were angry, there was also a faction who felt indifferent and felt that the black community shouldn’t be angry. An example of this opinion is the white women, such as Mrs. Merriweather and Aunt Alexandra. During one of the white women’s tea party Mrs. Merriweather says, “The cooks and the field hands are just dissatisfied, but they’re settling down now-they grumbled all next day after the trial” (Lee 310). This illustrates that the white women didn’t understand why the black people were sad and felt that the black people had no reason to be upset with the result of the case. This example from To Kill a Mockingbird reveals that the Tom Robinson case caused mixed feelings throughout his community, just as the Michael Brown case did in
One example of the Michael Brown case controversy is the disagreement of whether Michael Brown had actually physically threatened Darren Wilson, the police officer. There was dispute about whether Michael was walking towards Wilson or if Brown was trying to surrender. In addition to what actually happened that day, the decision not to charge Wilson caused controversy as well. This can be compared to To Kill a Mockingbird. In the story, no one has any physical or medical evidence as told by Atticus “The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with” (Lee 271). This shows that the state has no evidence, something that one would think of as essential for convicting someone. The lack of true evidence caused the outcome of the trial to be criticized similarly to the Michael Brown trial. The Tom Robinson case also caused a lot of controversy between the characters. Even though Bob Ewell won the case, he still made his hate of Atticus clear throughout the story, spitting on him and eventually attempting to kill his children. Both the Tom Robinson case and the Michael Brown case caused and had plenty of controversy surrounding