Question Three:
According to the Appeals Court, several errors were made by the judge who presided over the matter at trial. One of the principal errors by the court was the allowance of the plaintiff’s counsel to make highly prejudicial comments that were not helpful to the court and which only served to inflame the jury against the defendants. Though the case concerned mistreatment based on the plaintiff’s sexual orientation, the plaintiff’s counsel had misdirected himself by drawing a link of the defendant who was German, to the Holocaust and the Nazi Germany. The court further allowed counsel to elicit evidence of a physical attack allegedly committed against an AIDS patient by one of the assistants to the defendant. In addition, the court gave room to the plaintiff’s counsel to call witnesses who testified of the heavy alcohol consumption of the defendants. These errors were incurable as they were highly prejudicial to the defendants yet they had little probative value. The judge at trial erred in allowing this as it only had a prejudicial effect on the part of the jury against the defendants. The judge also erred in awarding grossly excessive damages totaling to over $20,000,000 to the plaintiff.
Question Seven:
The police would be violating a suspect’s Fourth Amendment Rights against unlawful search and seizure if they were to place a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) in a suspect’s car without securing a warrant. This was stated in the case of United States v Maynard where police who were investigating Antoine Jones on suspicion of distributing cocaine attached a GPS unit to Jones car. They were able to monitor his movements for over a month and based on the information, arrested Jones and convicted him on several charges. Jones along with his co-conspirator Lawrence Maynard filed a lawsuit challenging the action by the city to place a GPS. In upholding the plaintiff’s claim, the court held that the information obtained in this manner was in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Question 8 (a)
In the case of City of Erie v. Pap’s A.M., the applicants went to the Supreme Court to challenge an ordinance that made it a criminalized nudity in public. The applicants contended that the ordinance was unconstitutional as it violated against the First Amendment of the Constitution of the right to free speech or expression.
Question 8(b)
In arriving at the decision, the Supreme Court held that being in a state of nudity was not a form of expression as to fall within the First Amendment rights.
Work Cited
Monroe, ED. "City of Erie v. PAP's AM: Nude Dancing as a Form of Expression Protected under the First Amendment." SUV Rev (2007): 11-16.
