Sara Jane Olson is an American far-left activist who was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in 1975. The group disbanded and she was a fugitive for decades before being arrested. In 2001, she pleaded guilty to attempted murder related to a failed bombing plot. In 2003 she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder related the death of a customer during a botched bank robbery the SLA committed in California. Known then as Soliah, she was also accused of helping a group hide Patty Hearst, a kidnapped newspaper heiress, in 1974. After being federally indicted in 1976, Soliah was a wanted fugitive for several decades. She lived for periods in Zimbabwe and the U.S. states of Washington and Minnesota.
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted criminals are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives. Crimes that warrant life imprisonment are extremely serious and usually violent. Examples of these crimes are murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, illegal drug trade, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated property damage, arson, hate crime, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide.
Lee Boyd Malvo, also known as John Lee Malvo, is an American convicted murderer who, along with John Allen Muhammad, committed a series of murders dubbed the D.C. sniper attacks over a three-week period in October 2002. Malvo was aged 17 during the span of the shootings. He is serving multiple life sentences at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia, a supermax prison. Muhammad was executed in 2009.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Indiana. The last man executed in the state, excluding federal executions at Terre Haute, was the murderer Matthew Wrinkles in 2009.
The Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial began on 3 May 2000, more than 11 years after the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988. The 36-week bench trial took place at a specially convened Scottish Court in the Netherlands set up under Scots law and held at a disused United States Air Force base called Camp Zeist near Utrecht.
In England and Wales, life imprisonment is a sentence that lasts until the death of the prisoner, although in most cases the prisoner will be eligible for early release after a minimum term set by the judge. In exceptional cases a judge may impose a "whole life order", meaning that the offender is never considered for parole, although they may still be released on compassionate grounds at the discretion of the Home Secretary. Whole life orders are usually imposed for aggravated murder, and can only be imposed where the offender was at least 21 years old at the time of the offence being committed.
Thompson v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 815 (1988), was the first case since the moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in the United States in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of a minor on grounds of "cruel and unusual punishment." The holding in Thompson was expanded on by Roper v. Simmons (2005), where the Supreme Court extended the "evolving standards" rationale to those under 18 years old.
The Hindawi affair was a failed attempt to bomb El Al Flight 016, from London to Tel Aviv in April 1986 by Nezar Nawwaf al-Mansur al-Hindawi, a Jordanian citizen.
Harry Joseph Bowman, also known as "Taco", was an American outlaw biker and gangster who served as the international president of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club between 1984 and 1999. During his tenure as president, the club had chapters in more than 30 cities in the United States and some 20 chapters in at least four other countries.
Mohammad Momin Khawaja is a Canadian found guilty of involvement in a plot to plant fertilizer bombs in the United Kingdom; while working as a software engineer under contract to the Foreign Affairs department in 2004 became the first person charged and found guilty under the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act following the proof that he communicated with British Islamists plotting a bomb attack. On March 12, 2009, Khawaja was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison and was eligible for parole five years into the prison term. On December 17, 2010, Khawaja's sentence was increased to life imprisonment by the Ontario Court of Appeals.
The 2007 Batasang Pambansa bombing occurred on the night of November 13, 2007 at the Batasang Pambansa Complex in Quezon City, Philippines—the seat of the country's House of Representatives. As representatives Wahab Akbar, Luzviminda Ilagan (Gabriela), and Pryde Henry Teves were exiting the south wing of the building after a session, explosives in a nearby parked motorcycle were detonated. Akbar and a staffer of Ilagan were killed in the blast. Ilagan and Teves were injured, while four injured staffers later succumbed to their injuries.
In the United States, life imprisonment is the most severe punishment provided by law in states with no valid capital punishment statute, and second-most in those with a valid statute. According to a 2013 study, 1 of every 2 000 inhabitants of the U.S. were imprisoned for life as of 2012.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Wyoming.
Oscar López Rivera is a Puerto Rican activist and militant who was a member and suspected leader of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), a clandestine paramilitary organization devoted to Puerto Rican independence that carried out more than 130 bomb attacks in the United States between 1974 and 1983. López Rivera was tried by the United States government for seditious conspiracy, use of force to commit robbery, interstate transportation of firearms, and conspiracy to transport explosives with intent to destroy government property.
Zvonko Bušić was a Croatian responsible for hijacking TWA Flight 355 in September 1976. He was subsequently convicted of air piracy and spent 32 years in prison in the United States before being released on parole and deported in July 2008.
Yaakov Teitel is an American-born Israeli religious nationalist, convicted for killing two people in 2009. Teitel, who had immigrated to Israel in 2000, settling in a West Bank settlement, confessed to planning and committing various acts of terrorism and hate crimes against Palestinians, homosexuals, left-wingers, missionary Christians, and police officers across Israel. Teitel was sentenced to life imprisonment, which he is currently serving.
The Mosman bomb hoax took place in the Lower North Shore Sydney suburb of Mosman, New South Wales, Australia on 3 August 2011. An apparent collar bomb was placed around the neck of 18-year-old student Madeleine Pulver by a balaclava-clad home intruder. A note attached to the device stated that any attempt to alert law enforcement would "trigger an immediate BRIAN DOUGLAS WELLS event". Brian Wells was a pizza delivery driver who was killed in a bank robbery involving a collar bomb in 2003.
Brett Kimberlin is an American political activist who was convicted in 1980 on drug charges and of perpetrating the 1978 Speedway bombings. Since his release from prison, Kimberlin has co-founded the non-profit Justice Through Music Project and the activist organization Velvet Revolution. He has also been involved in various legal disputes, including those associated with a claim that he supplied marijuana to Dan Quayle.
On the evening of July 13, 1965, Hubert Damon Strange shot Willie Brewster as Brewster drove past him on Highway 202 outside Anniston, Alabama; two days later, Brewster died in a hospital. In December of that year, Strange was convicted of second degree murder; this was the first time in the history of Alabama that a white man was convicted of killing a black man in a racially-motivated murder case.
On February 9, 2021, a mass shooting and bombing occurred at a medical clinic in Buffalo, Minnesota, United States. Just before 11:00 a.m. CST, Gregory Paul Ulrich, a 67-year-old man, shot five people at Allina Health's Buffalo Crossroads facility. One victim, Lindsay Overbay, died, and three others were critically injured from gunshot wounds. All of the victims were medical clinic staff. During the attack, Ulrich discharged three improvised explosive devices, one of which failed to detonate. He surrendered to police who were dispatched to the clinic, and he was taken into custody. He admitted to authorities that he fired on people inside the clinic and set off bombs.
