State V. Mann Class Case

During class on February 18th 2016, two different groups debated over the famous court case of State V. Mann. In this court case, the State argued that Mr. Mann did not have the right to shoot his slave, Lydia when she tried to escape from him. Mr. Mann argued that he did have the right to shoot her because he was her property. The class presented this court case very well and brought up interesting points that I did not know about this famous court case.

One point in particular that I found to be interesting is that Mr. Mann won this case because slavery was legal in the state of North Carolina at the time and Lydia was considered Mr. Mann's property. At the time of this court case laves were considered to be property rather than people. This argument was presented by the defendants of Mr. Mann stating that it was destruction of his own property, rather than injuring a human being. With this being said, the court claimed that Mr. Mann violated no laws because he was destructing his own property rather than injuring a person. At the end of the presentation I found out that Mr. Mann did indeed win this court case because he did not violate any constitutional laws at the time.

I personally believe that this court case is morally wrong because slavery was not only unconstitutional but violated many ethical values. I believe that both parties presented this court case very well. Both groups knew a ton of information about the court case and were able to present their sides without any bias on the court case.