In law, a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, either oral or written, of what they know or claim to know.
In law enforcement jargon, a suspect is a known person accused or suspected of committing a crime. Police and reporters in the United States often use the word suspect as a jargon when referring to the perpetrator of the offense. However, in official definition, the perpetrator is the robber, assailant, counterfeiter, etc.—the person who committed the crime. The distinction between suspect and perpetrator recognizes that the suspect is not known to have committed the offense, while the perpetrator—who may not yet have been suspected of the crime, and is thus not necessarily a suspect—is the one who did. The suspect may be a different person from the perpetrator, or there may have been no actual crime, which would mean there is no perpetrator.
The Smoking Gun is a website that posts legal documents, arrest records, and police mugshots on a daily basis. The intent is to bring to the public light information that is somewhat obscure or unreported by more mainstream media sources. Most of the site's content revolves around historical and current events, although it also features documents and photos relating to out-of-the-ordinary crimes and people.
A rogues' gallery is a police collection of mug shots or other images of criminal suspects kept for identification purposes.
Alphonse Bertillon was a French police officer and biometrics researcher who applied the anthropological technique of anthropometry to law enforcement creating an identification system based on physical measurements.
A wanted poster is a poster distributed to let the public know of a person whom authorities wish to apprehend. They generally include a picture of the person, either a photograph when one is available or of a facial composite image produced by the police.
A police lineup or identity parade is a process by which a crime victim or witness's putative identification of a suspect is confirmed to a level that can count as evidence at trial.
A perp walk, walking the perp, is a practice in law enforcement of taking an arrested suspect, usually right after arrest, out in public, usually from the police station to the vehicle to the courthouse and then after the court hearing back to the vehicle, creating an opportunity for a media frenzy to take photographs and video of the event. The defendant is typically handcuffed or otherwise restrained, and is sometimes dressed in prison garb. Within the United States the perp walk is most closely associated with New York City. The practice rose in popularity in the 1980s under U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, when suspects charged with felonies were perp-walked.
A facial composite is a graphical representation of one or more eyewitnesses' memories of a face, as recorded by a composite artist. Facial composites are used mainly by police in their investigation of crimes. These images are used to reconstruct the suspect's face in hope of identifying them. Facial reconstruction can also be used in archeological studies to get a visualization of ancient mummies or human remains.
A mug is a large cup with a handle.
Forensic science holds the branch of forensic photography which encompasses documenting both suspected and convicted criminals, and also the crime scenes, victims, and other evidence needed to make a conviction. Although photography was widely acknowledged as the most accurate way to depict and document people and objects, it was not until key developments in the late 19th century that it came to be widely accepted as a forensic means of identification.
In eyewitness identification, in criminal law, evidence is received from a witness "who has actually seen an event and can so testify in court".
Eric J. Etheridge is an American journalist and photographer who was the initial editor, in 1995, of George, the magazine co-founded by John F. Kennedy, Jr.
The Barrow Gang was an American gang active between 1932 and 1934. They were well known outlaws, robbers, murderers, and criminals who, as a gang, traveled the Central United States during the Great Depression. Their exploits were known all over the nation. They captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is sometimes referred to as the 'public enemy era'. Though the gang was notorious for the bank robberies they committed, they preferred to rob small stores or gas stations over banks. The gang was believed to have killed at least nine police officers, among several other murders.
In law, knowledge is one of the degrees of mens rea that constitute part of a crime. For example, in English law, the offence of knowingly being a passenger in a vehicle taken without consent (TWOC) requires that the prosecution prove not only that the defendant was a passenger in a vehicle and that it was taken by the driver without consent, but also that the defendant knew that it was taken without consent.
The three tramps are three men photographed by several Dallas-area newspapers under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Since the mid-1960s, various allegations have been made about the identities of the men and their involvement in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The three men were later identified from Dallas Police Department records as Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John Gedney.
Thirteen Most Wanted Men was a 1964 mural by Andy Warhol. The artwork was created for the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, New York. The mural was Warhol's only public work. It painted over with silver paint before the fair opened, reportedly due to official objections.
Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders is a 2008 book by Eric Etheridge. The book features the life stories of over 80 of the Freedom Riders who fought to desegregate interstate bus transportation in the Deep South, and includes both their original mug shots and contemporary photographic portraits taken 45 or more years later by Etheridge. The mug shots had been stored for decades by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a state "government agency formed in 1956 to oppose the Civil Rights Movement and the federal government". The preface was written by Roger Wilkins and the foreword by Diane McWhorter.
The mugshot publishing industry is a niche market of tabloid journalism in the United States. The industry consists of companies that publish mugshots and booking details of individuals arrested by law enforcement agencies. These companies publish the arrest information in tabloids, through local and multi-jurisdictional search websites. The related reputation management industry profits when individuals pay a fee to have their mugshot removed from one or more websites; often the same entity owns both the publishing site and the removal service, which has led to allegations of and lawsuits for extortionate practices and arrests of mugshot business owners on charges of identity theft, money laundering, and extortion. In 2018 the journal of the American Bar Association called the industry an "online extortion scheme."
On August 24, 2023, after being indicted on racketeering and related charges, Donald Trump, former president of the United States, voluntarily surrendered himself to authorities at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia, where a mug shot of him was taken. In the photograph, Trump, wearing a blue suit with a white shirt and a red tie, glowers at the camera in front of a gray backdrop. His face is lit from the side and from above. It is the first and thus far only police booking photograph of a U.S. president. After its publishing, the mug shot was used on merchandise by Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, in Internet memes, and featured on various media reports worldwide.
