July 5, 2011
the Scottsboro Boys Trials (English)
No crime in American history – the let alone a crime that never occurred – produced as many found equal to the task until the birth of convictions , reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight run on March 25, 1931. Over the course of the two decades that followed, the struggle for justice of the “Scottsboro Boys , “as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives, produced heroes, opened southern juries to blacks, exacerbated sectional strife, and divided America political left.
The defense lawyers demonstrated their incompetence in many ways. They expressed a willingness to have all nine defendants tried together, despite the prejudice such a trial might cause to Roy Wright, for example, who at age twelve was the youngest of the nine Scottsboro Boys. (The prosecution, fearing that a single trial might constitute reversible error, decided to try the defendants in groups of two or three.) The cross-examination of Victoria Price lasted only minutes, while examining doctors RR Bridges and John Lynch were not cross- examined at all. Ruby Bates was not asked about contradictions between her testimony and that of Price. The defense offered only the defendants themselves as witnesses, and their testimony was rambling, sometimes incoherent, and riddled with obvious misstatements. Six of the boys (Andy Wright, Willie Roberson, Charles Weems, Ozie Powell, Olen Montgomery, and Eugene Williams) denied raping or even having seen the two girls. But three others, all who later claimed they did so because of beatings and threats, said that a gang rape by other defendants did occur. Clarence Norris provided what one paper called “the highlight of the trial” when he said of the other blacks, “They all raped her, everyone of them.” No closing argument was offered by defense attorneys. A local editorialist described the state case as “so conclusive as to be almost perfect.”
TEST 9 READING COMPREHENSIONSECTION Ⅲ
Time-35 minutes
26 Questions
Directions: Each passage in this section is followed by a group of questions to be answered on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage. For some of the questions, more than one of the choices could conceivably answer the question. However, you are to choose the best answer, that is, the response that most accurately and completely answers the question, and blacken the corresponding space on your answer sheet.
After thirty years of investigation into cell genetics, researchers made startling discoveries in the 1960s and early 1970s which culminated in the development of processes, collectively known as recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (rDNA) technology, for the active manipulation of a cell genetic code. The technology has created excitement and controversy because it involves altering DNA-which contains the building blocks of the genetic code.
Using rDNA technology, scientists can transfer a portion of the DNA from one organism to a single living cell of another . The scientist chemically “snips” the DNA chain of the host cell at a predetermined point and attaches another piece of DNA from a donor cell at that place, creating a completely new organism.
Proponents of rDNA research and development claim that it will allow scientists to find cures for disease and to better understand how genetic information controls an organism development. They also see many other potentially practical benefits, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. Some corporations employing the new technology even claim that by the end of the century all major diseases will be treated with drugs derived from microorganisms created through rDNA technology Pharmaceutical products already developed, but not yet marketed, indicate that these predictions may be realized.
Proponents also cite nonmedical applications for this technology. Energy production and waste disposal may benefit: genetically altered organisms could convert sewage and other organic material into metnane fuel. Agriculture might also take advantage of rDNA technology to produce new varieties of crops that resist foul weather, pests, and the effects of poor soil.
A major concern of the critics of rDNA research is that genetically altered microorganisms might escape from the laboratory. Because these microorganisms are laboratory creations that, chaussure louboutin, in all probability, do not occur in nature, their interaction with the natural world cannot be predicted with certainty. It is possible that they could cause previously unknown, perhaps incurable diseases. The effect of genetically altered microorganisms on the world microbiological predator-prey relationships is another potentially serious problem pointed out by the opponents of rDNA research. Introducing a new species may disrupt or even destroy the existing ecosystem. The collapse of interdependent relationships among species, extrapolated to its extreme, could eventually result in the destruction of humanity.
Opponents of rDNA technology also cite ethical problems with it. For example, it gives scientists the power to instantly cross evolutionary and species boundaries that nature took millennia to establish. The implications of such power would become particularly profound if genetic engineers were to tinker with human genes, a practice that would bring us one step closer to Aldous Huxley grim vision in Brave New World of a totalitarian society that engineers human beings to fulfill specific roles.
1. In the passage, the author is primarily concerned with doing which one of the following?
(A) explaining the process and applications of rDNA technology
(B) advocating continued rDNA research and development
(C) providing evidence indicating the need for regulation of rDNA research and development
(D) summarizing the controversy surrounding rDNA research and development
(E) arguing that the environmental risks of rDNA technology may outweigh its medical benefits
2. According to the passage, which one of the following is an accurate statement about research into the genetic code of cells?
(A) It led to the development of processes for the manipulation of DNA.
(B) It was initiated by the discovery of rDNA technology.
( C) It led to the use of new treatments for major diseases.
(D) It was universally heralded as a great benefit to humanity.
(E) It was motivated by a desire to create new organisms.
3. The potential benefits of rDNA technology referred to in the passage include all of the following EXCEPT
(A) new methods of waste treatment
(B) new biological knowledge
(C) enhanced food production
(D) development of less expensive drugs
< br /> (E) increased energy production
4. Which one of the following, if true, would most
Guilty verdicts in the first trial were announced while the second trial was underway. The large crowd outside the courthouse let out a roar of approval that was clearly heard by the second jury inside. When the four trials were over, eight of the nine Scottsboro Boys had been convicted and sentenced to death. A mistrial was declared in the case of twelve-year old Roy Wright, when eleven of the jurors held out for death despite the request of the prosecution for only a life sentence in view of his tender age.
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The of ILD selected “two attorneys to represent the the Scottsboro Boys, in the retrials. The of ILD quieted skeptics who saw the organization caring more about the benefits it could derive from the case than the Boys welfare by asking Samuel Liebowitzto serve as the lead defense attorney. Liebowitz was a New York criminal attorney who had secured an astonishing record of seventy-seven acquittals and one hung jury in seventy- eight murder trials. Liebowitz was often described as “the next Clarence Darrow.” Liebowitz was a mainline Democrat with no connections with or sympathies toward the Communist Party. Joseph Brodsky, the ILD chief attorney, was selected to assist Liebowitz.
The prosecutor in the retrials was Alabama newly elected attorney general, Thomas Knight, Jr. Knight father, Thomas Knight, Sr., had authored the Alabama Supreme Court decision upholding the original convictions.
Hoboeing was a common pastime in the Depression year of 1931. For some, riding freights was an appealing adventure compared to the drudgery and dreariness of their daily lives. Others hopped rail cars to move from one fruitless job search to the next. Two dozen or so mainly male – and mainly young – whites and blacks rode the Southern Railroad Chattanooga to Memphis freight on March 25, 1931. Among them were four black Chattanooga teenagers hoping to investigate a rumor of government jobs in Memphis hauling logs on the river and five other black teens from various parts of Georgia. Four young whites, two males and two females dressed in overalls, also rode the train, returning to Huntsville from unsuccessful job searches in the cotton mills of Chattanooga.
Trials of the Scottsboro Boys began twelve days after their arrest in the courtroom of Judge AE Hawkins. Haywood Patterson described the scene as “one big smiling white face.” Many local newspapers had made their conclusions about the defendants before the trials began. One headline read: “ALL NEGROES POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED BY GIRLS AND ONE WHITE BOY WHO WAS HELD PRISONER WITH PISTOL AND KNIVES WHILE NINE BLACK FIENDS COMMITTED REVOLTING CRIME.” Representing the Boys in their uphill legal battle were Stephen Roddy and Milo Moody. They were no “Dream Team. “Roddy was an unpaid and unprepared Chattanooga real estate attorney who, on the first day of trial, was” so stewed he could hardly walk straight. “Moody was a forgetful seventy-year old local attorney who hadn tried a case in decades. Also greeted by the posse in Paint Rock were two millworkers from Huntsville, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. One or the other of the girls, either in response to a question or on their own initiative, told one of the posse members that they had been raped by a gang of twelve blacks with pistols and knives. In the jail that March 25th, Price pointed out six of the nine boys and said that they were the ones who raped her. The guard reportedly replied, “If those six had Miss Price, it stands to reason that the others had Miss Bates. “When one of the accused, Clarence Norris, called the girls liars he was struck by a bayonet. A crowd of several hundred men, hoping for a good old-fashioned lynching, surrounded the Scottsboro jail the night of their arrest for rape. Their plans were foiled, however, when Alabama governor, BM Miller, ordered the National Guard to Scottsboro to protect the suspects. The Scottsboro Boys spent the two years between their first trials and the second round, scheduled to begin in March, 1933 in Decatur, chaussure de foot, in the deplorable conditions of Depression-era Alabama prisons. While on death row at Kilby prison, on the very date originally set for their own executions, they watched as another inmate was carried off to unsoundproofed death chamber adjacent to their cells, then listened to the sounds of his electrocution. Once or twice a week they were allowed to leave their tiny cells, as they were handcuffed and walked a few yards down the hall to a shower. An early visitor found them “terrified, bewildered” like “scared little mice, caught in a trap.” They fought, they wrote letters if they could write at all, they thought about girls and life on the outside, they dreamed of their executions. As their trial date appro In January, 1932, the Alabama Supreme Court, by a 6 – 1 vote, affirmed all but one of the eight convictions and death sentences. (The court ruled that Eugene Williams, age thirteen , should have not been tried as an adult.) The cases were appealed to the United States Supreme Court which overturned the convictions in the landmark case ofPowell vs Alabama. The Court, 7 – 2, ruled that the right of the defendants under the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause to competent legal counsel had been denied by Alabama. There would have to be new trials. The NAACP, which might have been expected to rush to the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, did not. Rape was a politically explosive charge in the South, and the NAACP was concerned about damage to its effectiveness that might result if it turned out some or all of the Boys were guilty. Instead, it was the Communist Party that moved aggressively to make the Scottsboro case their own. The Party saw the case as providing a great recruiting tool among southern blacks and northern liberals. The Communist Party, through its legal arm, the International Labor Defense (ILD), chaussure puma, pronounced the case against the Boys a “murderous frame-up” and began efforts, ultimately successful, to be named as their attorneys. The NAACP, a slow-moving bureaucracy, finally came to the realization that the Scottsboro Boys were most likely innocent and that leadership in the case would have large public relations benefits. As a last -ditch effort to beat back the ILD in the battle over representation, NAACP officials persuaded renowned defense attorney Clarence Darrow to take their case to Alabama. But it was by then too late. The Scottsboro Boys, for better or worse, cast their lots with the Communists Who, in the South, were treated with only mynewly more courtesy than a gang of rapists. “ [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Next
Soon after the train crossed the Alabama border, a white youth walked across the top of a tank car. He stepped on the hand of a black youth named Haywood Patterson, who was hanging on to its side. Patterson had friends aboard the train. A stone-throwing fight erupted between white youths and a larger group of black youths. Eventually, the blacks succeeded in forcing all but one of the members of the white gang off the train. Patterson pulled the one remaining white youth, Orville Gilley, back onto the train after it had accelerated to a life-endangering speed. Some of the whites forced off the train went to the stationmaster in Stevenson to report what they described as an assault by a gang of blacks. The stationmaster wired ahead. A posse in Paint Rock, Alabama stopped the train. Dozens of men with guns rushed at the train as it ground to a halt. The armed men rounded up every black youth they could find. Nine captured blacks , soon to be called “The Scottsboro Boys,” were tied together with plow line, loaded on a flatback truck, and taken to a jail in Scottsboro.
