Subjects:
Tom Robinson was a character from To Kill a Mockingbird. He was a black man who lived in Maycomb with his family, near the city dump. He had a crippled left arm, and everyday he walked past the Ewell’s house, to work. He worked on Mr. Link Deas’s property, picking cotton or working in the yard during fall and winter (Lee 190).
One day he was walking past the Ewell’s home when Mayella Ewell called him into the yard. Mayella is the eighteen-year-old daughter of the Ewell family. Mayella proceeded to hug and kiss Tom. As Tom resisted, Mr. Ewell yelled at Mayella and Tom ran. Mr. Ewell, in the next several hours, beat Mayella for making advances on Tom, a black man (Lee 194).
Tom was arrested and charge of raping Mayella Ewell. When he went to court, Mr. Ewell and Mayella testified that Tom beat
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Tom Robinson and Rodney King can be compared in many ways. Ewell actually beat Mayella in frustration (Lee, 211). Beaten on the left side of her body. In Atticus’s closing words he argued that Tom did not rape Mayella and that Mayella committed the real crime.
On March 15, 1991, the four white police officers that were involved in the incident were arraigned on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and use of excessive force.
When the jury of all white men returned, they all found Tom guilty of raping Mayella, even though clearly Tom did not.
Following the verdict of the trial, several days of rioting occurred in Los Angeles becoming one of the worst riots in United States history (Encarta, “Los Angeles”). She’ll accuse him of rape, he’ll be sent to prison and it will be done (Lee, 202). Stores were looted, property was vandalized, fifty-eight died, and people’s attitude’s from all over, especially Los Angeles, changed about the court system. When Kind finally stopped he received fifty-six hits from a police baton, six kicks and two 50,000-volt electronic dart shocks producing eleven skull fractures, brain damage and kidney damage (Lepore). On April 29, 1992, the four police officers were acquitted (Lepore).
On March 3, 1991, Rodney King was the driver of a car in Los Angeles, California. The trial of the four police officers was relocated from L. Tom’s lawyer, Atticus Finch, defended Tom by stating that it could not have been possible for Tom to choke and beat Mayella, because he had only one good arm, his right.
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