Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple was accused of providing top-secret information about radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines and valuable nuclear weapon designs. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 in the Sing Sing correctional facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to suffer that penalty during peacetime.
The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case in the United States over the aggravated assault and rape of a white woman in Manhattan's Central Park on April 19, 1989, occurring during a string of other attacks in the park the same night. Five black and Latino youths were convicted of assaulting the woman, and served sentences ranging from six to twelve years. All later had their charges vacated after a prison inmate confessed to the crime.
A kangaroo court is a "jumped-up" court that is typically convened ad hoc, ignores recognized standards of law or justice, and carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides. A kangaroo court may ignore due process and come to a predetermined conclusion. The term may also apply to a court held by a legitimate judicial authority which intentionally disregards the court's legal or ethical obligations.
Trial by ordeal was an ancient judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused was determined by subjecting them to a painful, or at least an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience. In medieval Europe, like trial by combat, trial by ordeal, such as cruentation, was considered a "judgement of God" : a procedure based on the premise that God would help the innocent by performing a miracle on his behalf. The practice has much earlier roots, attested to as far back as the Code of Hammurabi and the Code of Ur-Nammu.
In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. The finality of an acquittal is dependent on the jurisdiction. In some countries, such as the United States, an acquittal operates to bar the retrial of the accused for the same offense, even if new evidence surfaces that further implicates the accused. The effect of an acquittal on criminal proceedings is the same whether it results from a jury verdict or results from the operation of some other rule that discharges the accused. In other countries, the prosecuting authority may appeal an acquittal similar to how a defendant may appeal a conviction.
The Scottsboro Boys were nine African-American teenagers, ages 12 to 19, accused in Alabama 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 miscarriage of justice in the United States legal system.
The Innocence Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who it claims have been wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. The group cites various studies estimating that in the United States, between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners are innocent. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. Scheck and Neufeld gained national attention in the mid-1990s as part of the "Dream Team" of lawyers who formed part of the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder case.
Trial in absentia is a criminal proceeding in a court of law in which the person who is subject to it is not physically present at those proceedings. In absentia is Latin for "in (the) absence". Its meaning varies by jurisdiction and legal system.
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt, and/or innocence, of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so they will serve as both an impressive example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors. Show trials tend to be retributive rather than corrective and they are also conducted for propagandistic purposes. The term was first recorded in 1928.
A miscarriage of justice, also known as a wrongful conviction, occurs when a person is convicted and punished for a crime that he or she did not actually commit. It can occur in both criminal and civil proceedings, which includes removal proceedings. The main contributing factors are eyewitness misidentification, faulty forensic analysis, false confessions by vulnerable suspects, perjury and lies told by witnesses, misconduct by police, prosecutors or judges and inadequate defence strategies put forward by the defendant's legal team.
The Maxi Trial was a criminal trial against the Sicilian Mafia that took place in Palermo, Sicily. The trial lasted from 10 February 1986 to 30 January 1992, and was held in a bunker-style courthouse specially constructed for this purpose inside the walls of the Ucciardone prison.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by opponents of capital punishment, while proponents suggest that the argument of innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of death penalty.
Legal malpractice is the term for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, or breach of contract by a lawyer during the provision of legal services that causes harm to a client.
The Night of the Murdered Poets was the execution of thirteen Soviet Jews in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union on 12 August 1952. The arrests were first made in September 1948 and June 1949. All defendants were falsely accused of espionage and treason as well as many other crimes. After their arrests, they were tortured, beaten, and isolated for three years before being formally charged. There were five Yiddish writers among these defendants, all of whom were part of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.
The 1960s Sicilian Mafia trials took place at the end of that decade in response to a rise in organized crime violence around the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were three major trials, each featuring multiple defendants, that saw hundreds of alleged Mafiosi on trial for dozens of crimes. From the authority's point of view, they were a failure; very few defendants were convicted, although later trials as well as information from pentiti confirmed most of those acquitted were Mafiosi members, and were guilty of many crimes including some of those they were acquitted of.
A number of war crimes trials were held in the 1960s in Soviet Estonia. The best-known trial was brought in 1961, by the local Soviet authorities against Estonian collaborators who had participated in the Holocaust during the German occupation (1941–1944). The accused were charged with murdering up to 5000 German and Czechoslovakian Jews and Romani people near the Kalevi-Liiva concentration camp in 1942–1943. The public trial by the Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR was held in the auditorium of the Navy Officers Club in Tallinn and attended by a mass audience. All three defendants were convicted and sentenced to death, then two of them were executed shortly after. The third defendant, Ain-Ervin Mere was tried in absentia and was not available for execution.
Enrico "Henry" Tameleo, also known as "The Referee", was an American mobster from Boston, Massachusetts and underboss in the New England-based Patriarca crime family and was also a member of the New York-based Bonanno crime family of La Cosa Nostra from 1952 to 1968.
On 1 February 2012, a massive riot occurred at Port Said Stadium in Port Said, Egypt, following an Egyptian Premier League football match between Masry and Ahly. 74 people were killed and more than 500 were injured after thousands of Masry spectators stormed the stadium stands and the pitch, following a 3–1 victory by their team, and violently attacked Ahly fans using clubs, stones, bottles, and fireworks, trapping them inside the El Ahly partition of the stadium. Many of the deaths were due to the police's refusal to open the stadium gates, trapping the Ahly fans inside, leaving some to die, and killing others in a stampede to escape. Civil unrest and severe clashes continued until 11 February but general strikes ended on 13 February. Riots erupted in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and Luzon. Police fired tear gas at protesters thus clashes erupted on the streets due to battles of tear gas. Unrest calmed and ended on 13 February.
The Krasnodar Trial was a war crimes trial held in front of a Soviet military tribunal in July 1943 in Krasnodar, Soviet Union. Defendants included Soviet collaborators with the German military, police, and SS forces responsible for implementing the occupational policies during the German–Soviet War of 1941–45.
The Burgos trials were a series of military tribunals held in the Spanish city of Burgos from 3 to 9 December 1970. The trials prosecuted 16 members of the Basque separatist organisation Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) for their involvement in two murders of police officers in 1968. Causing international outrage and sympathy for the defendants, the trials are best known for six death sentences handed out by the tribunals which were later commuted to lengthy prison spells.
