WorksheetsApril News/Chapter Five: "Of the Coming of John"
Total questions: 20
Worksheet time: 15mins
The _____ defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes, 102-85, to win the women’s college basketball championship. The game drew an average of 9.9 million viewers, making it the most viewed N.C.A.A. women’s basketball final in television history.
L.S.U. Tigers
Ohio State Buckeyes
South Carolina Gamecocks
UConn Huskies
Stevenson opens chapter five with over a page of direct quotations from McMillian’s sister and other family members. What effect does this have?
The reader gains a sense of the family’s anguish and indignation that McMillian could be convicted when they knew he was with them at the time of the murder
The quotations contradict one another, leaving the reader feeling ambivalent and unsure of McMillian’s guilt or innocence
The quotations allow the reader to lay out a logical, objective assessment of the facts at hand before jumping into the content of the chapter
The quotations impress upon the reader the lack of support McMillian has in his efforts to get his ruling overturned
_____ abruptly agreed on April 18 to pay $787.5 million to resolve a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election, averting a lengthy and embarrassing trial just as a packed courtroom was seated in anticipation of hearing opening statements.
CNN
Fox News
NPR
The Washington Post
The author named chapter five after W.E.B. DuBois’s short story “Of the Coming of John”, which he discusses on page 100-101. Why is this text so relevant to Stevenson?
The story has biblical allusions in it that provide Stevenson with hope when he feels despair
It is eerily similar to To Kill a Mockingbird and the irony shocked Stevenson
He has always identified with the main character, but seeing how hurt the black community is by Walter's wrongful conviction, he draws a parallel between them and John's community
John's story reminds Stevenson of his childhood and it serves as inspiration moving forward
The Russian authorities said on April 7 that they formally charged Evan Gershkovich, the _____ , who is jailed in Moscow, with espionage.
billionaire investment banker
N.B.A. coach
Metropolitan Opera singer
Wall Street Journal correspondent
What is the purpose of “mitigation narratives” in a court system (104)?
Judges don’t actually allow mitigation narratives to be heard in their court system, considering them to be too subjective to be allowed in a courtroom.
A lawyer can use the information in mitigation narratives to put the crimes in a context that helps people understand the client better. It is not meant to excuse the crime, but to make a case for mercy
Defense attorneys use mitigation narratives to argue that their clients could not possibly have committed the crimes that they have been accused of
Mitigation narratives are used by prosecutors to argue for tougher sentences for the cases they are trying
Across the country, _____ has/have emerged this year as a defining legislative issue, with Republicans enacting sweeping new restrictions in states they control.
campaign financing
military spending
transgender rights
speculation on Wall Street
How was Darnell Houston able to help McMillian’s case?
He was able to testify that he had seen McMillian at the fish fry during the time of the murder
He was able to testify that Myers confessed that he had been lying about McMillian’s involvement in the case
He gave them some leads about who might actually have killed Ronda Morrison
He was able to testify that Bill Hooks was with him during the time of the murder and couldn’t have seen Walter’s truck as he claimed
This month, India reached a notable milestone. The country’s _____ surpassed that of China, which had held the No. 1 position for at least three centuries.
gross domestic product
life expectancy
literacy rate
population
After getting Houston’s testimony, Stevenson feels it might be well received by the Monroe County District Attorney, Tom Chapman for all of the following reasons EXCEPT
Tom Chapman was a former criminal defense attorney instead of a prosecutor
Philosophically, Stevenson feels like it’s only right to give him the benefit of the doubt until he has reasons to believe otherwise
Since Chapman is also black, Stevenson feels he would have empathy for Walter's situation
He was possibly less personally invested in upholding Walter’s conviction since he hadn’t been a part of that trial
The F.B.I. arrested a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard on April 13 in connection with the leak of dozens of highly classified documents. According to federal authorities, the suspect had _____.
handed over documents to major media outlets revealing government misconduct
left his briefcase unattended in a coffee shop
posted sensitive intelligence to an online gaming chat group
sold intelligence assessments to foreign governments
What negative consequence did Darnell Houston face for giving his testimony to Stevenson?
He received bomb threats
He was charged with perjury
His relatives and his friends stopped speaking to him
He didn’t face any consequences
Which show concluded the longest run in Broadway history on April 16?
“Cats”
“Hamilton”
“Into the Woods”
“Phantom of the Opera”
What happened to the author’s appeal to reopen the case against Walter?
It was accepted
We don't find out
The decision was delayed
It was denied
Liam Squires, 10, a Virginia fifth grader, found a mistake in his science textbook’s diagram of the rock cycle. See if you can spot the error in the photo above.
The arrows should all be pointing to the left.
The rocks labeled “Sedimentary” and “Igneous” should swap places.
The title of the diagram should be “The Rock and Roll Cycle.”
The word “Igneous” should be spelled “Ingenious.”
What is the irony of Stevenson seeing a flier about a production of To Kill a Mockingbird after leaving Chapman’s office?
Chapman had just admitted to Stevenson that he had never seen To Kill a Mockingbird.
McMillian is a wrongfully convicted black man, just like Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird.
The central argument of To Kill a Mockingbird is that we need to dismantle the modern court system, so it was jarring to see the flier in a court office
Stevenson remarks upon seeing the flier that Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird received more compassion in the fictional story than McMillian has received in real life
After 25 years, Netflix announced it would be _____ .
closing all of it physical video rental stores
ending its DVD-by-mail service
phasing out its satellite cable operations
sunsetting its ad-supported subscription plan
Why is the county’s treatment of Darnell Houston so discouraging to Stevenson?
It showed him that the authorities were so determined to maintain McMillian’s wrongful conviction that they were willing to threaten the people who contradicted it
It was Houston’s reaction to this treatment that was so discouraging. Stevenson knew that if all of his witnesses gave up so easily, he would never be able to put together the case he needed to free McMillian
Stevenson understood that if they were willing to go after Houston, they would go after himself as well, and he became seriously concerned for his own safety
Stevenson realized then that no one took Houston seriously, likely indicating that Houston’s testimony would have minimal impact on an appeal attempt
Three of the articles below about artificial intelligence were recently published in The New York Times. One is from the satirical site The Onion. Which is the fake news story?
A Campaign Aide Didn’t Write That Email. A.I. Did.
An A.I. Hit of Fake ‘Drake’ and ‘The Weeknd’ Rattles the Music World
Instant Videos Could Represent the Next Leap in A.I. Technology
Robots Inform Artificial Intelligence Researchers That They’ll Take It From Here
As Stevenson drives home at the end of the chapter, he looks at the countryside and says this time he doesn’t have to imagine what life there must have been like decades ago. What does he mean by this?
This is a sign of Stevenson’s mental state. He’s too exhausted by the events of the week to expend that mental energy anymore, even though it used to be a favorite past time of his
He decides that the county’s overt racism and discrimination had been expressed just as openly now as they were decades ago, making life virtually the same.
He understands that reflecting on what life was like in the past is not going to be useful in freeing McMillian, so he decides to begin focusing on the present instead.
Stevenson’s deep research about the area, done to help him with McMillian’s case, has taken all of the mystery from the area for him
