The Scottsboro Boys were nine African-American male teenagers accused of raping two white women in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is commonly cited as an example of a legal injustice in the United States legal system.
The United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB), colloquially known as Leavenworth, is a military correctional facility located on Fort Leavenworth, a United States Army post in Kansas. It is one of two major prisons built on Fort Leavenworth property, the other is the military Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, which opened on 5 October 2010. It reports to the United States Army Corrections Command and its commandant usually holds the rank of colonel.
The murder of Megan Nicole Kanka occurred in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Seven-year-old Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by her neighbor, Jesse Timmendequas, after he lured her into his house; Timmendequas had previously been convicted of child molestation. The murder attracted national attention and subsequently led to the introduction of "Megan's Law", which requires law enforcement to disclose details relating to the location of registered sex offenders.
Following the historic Lindbergh kidnapping, the United States Congress passed a federal kidnapping statute—known as the Federal Kidnapping Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1) —which was intended to let federal authorities step in and pursue kidnappers once they had crossed state lines with their victim. The act was first proposed in December 1931 by Missouri Senator Roscoe Conkling Patterson, who pointed to several recent kidnappings in the Missouri area in calling for a federal solution. Initial resistance to Patterson's proposal was based on concerns over funding and state's rights. Consideration of the law was revived following the kidnapping of Howard Woolverton in late January 1932. Woolverton's kidnapping featured prominently in several newspaper series researched and prepared in the weeks following his abduction, and were quite possibly inspired by it. Two such projects, by Bruce Catton of the Newspaper Enterprise Association and Fred Pasley of the Daily News of New York City, were ready for publication within a day or two of the Lindbergh kidnapping. Both series, which ran in papers across North America, described kidnapping as an existential threat to American life, a singular, growing crime wave in which no one was safe.
Dernell Renauld Stenson was an American professional baseball outfielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Cincinnati Reds. He batted and threw left-handed.
The 2006 Richmond spree murders took place during a seven-day period in January 2006 in and around Richmond, Virginia, United States; seven people—four members of the Harvey family and three members of the Baskerville–Tucker family—were killed.
Riley Dobi Noel was an American convicted murderer who was executed for the June 1995 murders of Marcell Young, Mustafa Hussian, and Malak Hussian in Varner, Arkansas.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
The Ripper Crew or the Chicago Rippers was an organized crime group of serial killers, cannibals, rapists, and necrophiles. The group composed of Robin Gecht and three associates: Edward Spreitzer, and brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis. They were suspected in the murders of 17 women in Illinois in 1981 and 1982, as well as the unrelated fatal shooting of a man in a random drive-by shooting. According to one of the detectives who investigated the case, Gecht "made Manson look like a Boy Scout."
The Jeanine Nicarico murder case was a complex and influential homicide investigation and prosecution in which two men, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, both Latinos, were wrongfully convicted of abduction, rape and murder in 1985 in DuPage County, Illinois. They were both sentenced to death. The case was scrutinized during appeals for being weak in evidence.
Terry Anthony Blair was an American serial killer who was convicted of killing seven women of various ages in Kansas City, Missouri, though investigators believe he may have additional unidentified victims.
Donald Leroy Evans was an American serial killer who murdered at least three people from 1985 to 1991. He was known for confessing to killing victims at parks and rest areas across more than twenty U.S. states.
Romell Broom was an American death row inmate who was convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape. He was sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of 14-year-old Tryna Middleton. Broom was scheduled to be executed on September 15, 2009, but after executioners failed to locate a vein he was granted a reprieve. A second execution attempt was scheduled for June 2020, which was delayed until March 2022. Broom died from COVID-19 in prison before the sentence could be carried out.
John Albert Gardner III is an American convicted double murderer, rapist, and child molester. He confessed to the February 2009 rape and murder of 14-year-old Amber Dubois from Escondido, California, and the February 2010 rape and murder of 17-year-old Chelsea King from Poway, California after he entered a plea agreement that spared him from execution. Additionally, Gardner attempted to rape 22-year-old Candice Moncayo of San Diego County, and had been previously incarcerated for the molestation of a 13-year-old girl.
Rick and Suzanna Wamsley were murdered on December 11, 2003 in their home in Mansfield, Texas, as part of a conspiracy involving their son Andrew and two others.
Kylie Maria Antonia Maybury was an Australian schoolgirl from Preston, an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Maybury was kidnapped, raped, and murdered on 6 November 1984, the date of the 1984 Melbourne Cup Day; and she was nicknamed in the Melbourne tabloid newspaper The Sun News-Pictorial as the Cup Day Girl.
Anthony Cook and Nathaniel Cook are American serial killer brothers who committed a series of at least 9 rapes and murders of mostly couples in Toledo, Ohio, area between 1973 and 1981. Their guilt was established in the late 1990s thanks to DNA profiling, after which both brothers were convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
Jerry Lee Little Jr. was an American serial killer who killed 4 women in St. Louis, Missouri between 1985 and 1988. At the time of his arrest, the 32-year-old was an avid recidivist who had spent more than 17 years of his life behind bars. In 1990, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Reginald Perkins was an American serial killer and sex offender who was executed in Texas for the December 2000 murder of his stepmother. He was also linked with DNA to the murders of two women in Fort Worth in 1991, and he is suspected of killing a further three women in Ohio in the early 1980s.
Robert Wesley Knighton was an American serial killer and spree killer who, after serving time for kidnapping and manslaughter in Missouri embarked on a four-day, two-state killing spree along with Lawrence Lingle Brittain and Ruth Renee Williams. Brittain and Williams both pleaded guilty and testified against Knighton in exchange for leniency, and have since been released from prison. Knighton was convicted of two murders in Oklahoma and executed in 2003.
