Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse committed with the necessary intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisdiction. This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter is killing committed in the absence of malice, such as in the case of voluntary manslaughter brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity. Involuntary manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness.
A statute of limitations, known in civil law systems as a prescriptive period, is a law passed by a legislative body to set the maximum time after an event within which legal proceedings may be initiated. In most jurisdictions, such periods exist for both criminal law and civil law such as contract law and property law, though often under different names and with varying details.
The Church of Scientology has been involved in numerous court disputes across the world. In some cases, when the Church has initiated the dispute, questions have been raised as to its motives. The Church of Scientology says that its use of the legal system is necessary to protect its intellectual property and its right to freedom of religion. Critics say that most of the organization's legal claims are designed to harass those who criticize it and its manipulative business practices.
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was an American child beauty queen who was killed at age six in her family's home at 755 15th Street in Boulder, Colorado, on the night of December 25, 1996. Her body was found in the house's basement about seven hours after she had been reported missing. She had sustained a broken skull, and a garrote was tied around her neck. The autopsy report stated that JonBenét's official cause of death was "asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma". Her death was ruled a homicide. The case generated worldwide public and media interest, in part because her mother Patsy Ramsey, a former beauty queen, had entered JonBenét into a series of child beauty pageants.
Arson is the act of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson 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 risk to human life or property carrying a stricter penalty. Arson that 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.
Contract killing is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of compensation, monetary or otherwise. Either party may be a person, group, or organization. Contract killing has been associated with organized crime, government conspiracies, dictatorships, and vendettas. For example, in the United States, the Italian- and Jewish-American organized crime gang Murder, Inc. committed hundreds of murders on behalf of the National Crime Syndicate during the 1930s and 1940s.
Anthony Edward Martin is a farmer from Norfolk, England, who shot a burglar dead in his home in August 1999. There was some sympathy for Martin from people who enthusiastically supported the right to defend one's own home. However, prosecutors cast doubt on his evidence and pointed out that he did not have a valid firearms certificate. Martin was convicted of murder, later reduced to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility and served three years in prison, having been denied parole.
Samuel Holmes Sheppard was an American osteopath. He was convicted of the 1954 murder of his pregnant wife, Marilyn Reese Sheppard, but the conviction was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which cited a "carnival atmosphere" at the trial. Sheppard was acquitted at a retrial in 1966.
A Son of Sam law is a law designed to keep criminals from profiting from the publicity of their crimes; for instance, by selling their stories to publishers. Such laws often authorize the state to seize money earned from deals such as book/film biographies and paid interviews and use it to compensate the criminal's victims.
Paladin Press was a book publishing firm founded in 1970 by Peder Lund and Robert K. Brown. The company published non-fiction books and videos covering a wide range of specialty topics, including personal and financial freedom, survivalism and preparedness, firearms and shooting, various martial arts and self-defense, military and police tactics, investigation techniques, spying, lockpicking, sabotage, revenge, knives and knife fighting, explosives, and other "action topics". Sometimes described as the "most dangerous publisher in the world", it was sued over several murders connected to one of its books, and ceased operations in January 2018.
Curley v. NAMBLA was a wrongful death lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts in 2000, by Barbara and Robert Curley against the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), saying the organization had incited the men who kidnapped and murdered their young son. They sought $200 million in damages.
Daniel Aaron Horowitz is an American defense attorney who has represented several high-profile clients including talk show host Michael Savage and is a frequent commentator in the media on criminal cases in the news. In 2014 Horowitz was named a Top 100 Lawyer by the National Trial Lawyers. He is listed as a contributor to Criminal Law, Practice & Procedure. Daniel Horowitz is also a licensed real estate broker. Since 2017 Daniel Horowitz has been an SEC registered investment advisor associated with Meridian Investment Counsel, Inc..
The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) is a U.S law, passed in 2005, that protects firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products. Both arms manufacturers and dealers can still be held liable for damages resulting from defective products, breach of contract, criminal misconduct, and other actions for which they are directly responsible. However, they may be held liable for negligent entrustment if it is found that they had reason to believe a firearm was intended for use in a crime.
Lawrence Thomas "L.T." Horn was an American musician, record producer and chief recording engineer for Motown Records in Detroit and Los Angeles. He later served a life sentence for hiring a hit man to murder his ex-wife, Mildred Horn, their disabled son Trevor, and nurse Janice Saunders. The case quickly gained national interest, and went on to prompt a lawsuit with Paladin Press, the publishers of a book, Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, which had been used as a how-to manual by the killer.
The doctrine of common purpose, common design, joint enterprise, joint criminal enterprise or parasitic accessory liability is a common law legal doctrine that imputes criminal liability to the participants in a criminal enterprise for all reasonable results from that enterprise. The common purpose doctrine was established in English law, and later adopted in other common-law jurisdictions including Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, the Solomon Islands, Texas, the International Criminal Court, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Murder is an offence under the common law legal system of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to unlawfully cause either death or serious injury. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker states that many killings done with a high degree of subjective recklessness were treated as murder from the 12th century right through until the 1974 decision in DPP v Hyam.
Jay Robert Nash was an American author of more than 80 true crime books once called the "world's foremost encyclopedist of crime." Among Nash's crime anthologies are Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen and Outlaws, Look For the Woman, Bloodletters and Badmen, and The Great Pictorial History of World Crime. He also compiled his exhaustive research of criminal behaviour into a CD-ROM entitled Jay Robert Nash's True Crime Database.
Rodney A. Smolla, is an American author, First Amendment scholar and lawyer. Since 2022, he has served as the president of the Vermont Law and Graduate School, and was the 11th president of Furman University from 2010 to 2013.
Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case involving freedom of the press publishing public information. The Court held that both a Georgia statute prohibiting the release of a rape victim's name and its common-law privacy action counterpart were unconstitutional. The case was argued on November 11, 1974, and decided on March 3, 1975.
The Third Murder is a 2017 Japanese legal thriller film written, directed and edited by Hirokazu Kore-eda. It was screened in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival.
