Screening of Gideon’s Army at New York University

Our group was lucky enough to get to visit New York University and see a screening of Gideon’s Army. The movie shows us the life of a public defender. It is public defenders job to be attorneys for people who don’t have their own. One of the eye opening things that we noticed was that even though this is a very important job the brave people who do it often don’t make enough money to get by. On our field works we learned lots about how people who do important jobs in protecting the innocent are under payed. Another thing that opened our eyes is that the jury is often pre decided about their verdicts based on people’s appearances. In the movie the defendant is faced with a situation like this. Their only way out is to plead guilty. What pleading guilty does is even if you did not commit the crime but you know what the jury will decided then you can plead guilty to shorten the sentence. For our group this was a eye opener because it showed us how unable some people are to fight for themselves. As we watched the movie we noticed many important issue that effect the people who help the wrongful accused the most. This movie was very interesting and was worth our time

18rileys

My names Riley Siltler, and I find wrongful incarceration and police brutality a big problem in our city. Me and my social justice group have gone on many trips to figure out why this is such a big and under appreciated topic. Living in New York I often see people being stopped by the police for no reason. I think that it is important for us to fight for these people and their rights. Stop and frisk is also a big issue for our group and we have taken it into our own hands to educate the youth of our school about how to handle situations like these. 

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