In United States law, an Alford plea, also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, an Alford guilty plea, and the Alford doctrine, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence, but admits that the evidence presented by the prosecution would be likely to persuade a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
A misdemeanor is any "lesser" criminal act in some common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished less severely than more serious felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences. Typically misdemeanors are punished with monetary fines or community service.
A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Juries developed in England during the Middle Ages and are a hallmark of the Anglo common law legal system. They are still commonly used today in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and other countries whose legal systems are descended from English and later British legal traditions.
Arson is a crime of willfully and maliciously setting fire to or charring property. Though the act typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, watercraft, or forests. The crime is typically classified as a felony, with instances involving a greater degree of risk to human life or property carrying a stricter penalty. Arson which results in death can be further prosecuted as manslaughter or murder. A common motive for arson is to commit insurance fraud. In such cases, a person destroys their own property by burning it and then lies about the cause in order to collect against their insurance policy.
In criminal law, diminished responsibility is a potential defense by excuse by which defendants argue that although they broke the law, they should not be held fully criminally liable for doing so, as their mental functions were "diminished" or impaired.
Parole is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or else they may be rearrested and returned to prison.
Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), was a criminal case in which the United States Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty schemes in the United States in a 5–4 decision, with each member of the majority writing a separate opinion. Following Furman, in order to reinstate the death penalty, states had to at least remove arbitrary and discriminatory effects in order to satisfy the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty in 27 states, American Samoa, by the federal government, and the military, and is abolished in 23 states. Capital punishment is, in practice, only applied for aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, only 20 states have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other seven, as well as the federal government, being subject to different types of moratoriums. The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia. Along with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, the United States is one of five advanced democracies and the only Western nation that applies the death penalty regularly. It is one of 54 countries worldwide applying it, and was the first to develop lethal injection as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries. The Philippines has since abolished executions, and Guatemala has done so for civil offenses, leaving the United States as one of four countries to still use this method. It is common practice for the condemned to be administered sedatives prior to execution, regardless of the method used.
In the U.S. state of California, capital punishment is a legal penalty. However it is not allowed to be carried out as of March 2019, because executions were halted by an official moratorium ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom. Prior to the moratorium, executions were frozen by a federal court order since 2006, and the litigation resulting in the court order has been on hold since the promulgation of the moratorium. Thus, there will be a court-ordered moratorium on executions after the termination of Newsom's moratorium if capital punishment remains a legal penalty in California by then.
Chemical castration is castration via anaphrodisiac drugs, whether to reduce libido and sexual activity, to treat cancer, or otherwise. Unlike surgical castration, where the gonads are removed through an incision in the body, chemical castration does not remove organs, nor is it a form of sterilization. Chemical castration is generally considered reversible when treatment is discontinued, although permanent effects in body chemistry can sometimes be seen, as in the case of bone density loss increasing with length of use of depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA).
San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is a style guide that prescribes the most widely used legal citation system in the United States. It is taught and used at a majority of U.S. law schools, and is also used in a majority of federal courts. There are also several "house" citation styles used by legal publishers in their works. The Bluebook is compiled by the Harvard Law Review Association, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. Currently, it is in its 21st edition. Its name derives from the cover's color.
Vehicular homicide is a crime that involves the death of a person other than the driver as a result of either criminally negligent or murderous operation of a motor vehicle.
In the United States, habitual offender laws have been implemented in the United States since at least 1952, and are part of the United States Justice Department's Anti-Violence Strategy. These laws require a person who is convicted of an offense and who has one or two other previous serious convictions to serve a mandatory life sentence in prison, with or without parole depending on the jurisdiction. The purpose of the laws is to drastically increase the punishment of those who continue to commit offenses after being convicted of one or two serious crimes.
Peter H. Irons is an American political activist, civil rights attorney, legal scholar, and professor emeritus of political science. He has written many books on the U.S. Supreme Court and constitutional litigation.
Incarceration in the United States is a primary form of punishment and rehabilitation for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceration rate. One out of every 5 people imprisoned across the world is incarcerated in the United States. In 2018 in the US, there were 698 people incarcerated per 100,000; this includes the incarceration rate for adults or people tried as adults. In 2016, 2.2 million Americans were incarcerated, which means for every 100,000 there are 655 who are currently inmates. Prison, parole, and probation operations generate an $81 billion annual cost to U.S. taxpayers, while police and court costs, bail bond fees, and prison phone fees generate another $100 billion in costs that are paid by individuals.
Marsy's Law, the California Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008, enacted by voters as Proposition 9 through the initiative process in the November 2008 general election, is a controversial amendment to the state's constitution and certain penal code sections. The act protects and expands the legal rights of victims of crime to include 17 rights in the judicial process, including the right to legal standing, protection from the defendant, notification of all court proceedings, and restitution, as well as granting parole boards far greater powers to deny inmates parole. Critics allege that the law unconstitutionally restricts defendant's rights, by allowing prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence under certain circumstances, and harms victims by restricting their rights to discovery, depositions, and interviews. Passage of this law in California has led to the passage of similar laws in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio and Wisconsin, and efforts to pass similar laws in Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania. In November 2017, Marsy's Law was found to be unconstitutional and void in its entirety by the Supreme Court of Montana for violating that state's procedure for amending the Montana Constitution.
In the United States, the legality of incest varies widely between jurisdictions regarding both the definition of the offense and penalties for its commission.
The Uniform Determinate Sentencing Act of 1976 was a bill signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown to changes sentencing requirements in the California Penal Code. The act converted most sentences from an "indeterminate" sentence length at the discretion of the parole board to a "determinate" sentence length specified by the state legislature. The act was one of the largest drivers in a ninefold increase in California's prison population in the two decades after the act passed.
