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 accepts imposition of a sentence. This plea is allowed even if the evidence to be presented by the prosecution would be likely to persuade a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This can be caused by circumstantial evidence and testimony favoring the prosecution, and difficulty finding evidence and witnesses that would aid the defense.
In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare cases prosecutorial and/or judge misconduct in the same jurisdiction. Double jeopardy is a common concept in criminal law – in civil law, a similar concept is that of res judicata. The double jeopardy protection in criminal prosecutions bars only an identical prosecution for the same offence except when the defendant is a servicemember as the courts have ruled that the military courts are a separate sovereign, therefore servicemembers can be held in two separate trials for the exact same charges; however, a different offence may be charged on identical evidence at a second trial. Res judicata protection is stronger – it precludes any causes of action or claims that arise from a previously litigated subject matter.
In law, a plea is a defendant's response to a criminal charge. A defendant may plead guilty or not guilty. Depending on jurisdiction, additional pleas may be available, including nolo contendere, no case to answer, or an Alford plea.
The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30 – October 2, 1919, at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of Elaine in rural Phillips County, Arkansas where African Americans were organizing against peonage and abuses in tenant farming. As many as several hundred African Americans and five white men were killed. Estimates of deaths made in the immediate aftermath of the Elaine Massacre by eyewitnesses range from 50 to "more than a hundred". Walter Francis White, an NAACP attorney who visited Elaine shortly after the incident, stated "... twenty-five Negroes killed, although some place the Negro fatalities as high as one hundred". More recent estimates in the 21st century of the number of black people killed during this violence are higher than estimates provided by the eyewitnesses, and have ranged into the hundreds. The white mobs were aided by federal troops and local terrorist organizations. Gov. Brough led a contingent of 583 US soldiers from Camp Pike, with a 12-gun machine gun battalion.
The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American male teenagers accused 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 legal injustice in the United States legal system.
Moore et al. v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86 (1923), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled 6–2 that the defendants' mob-dominated trials deprived them of due process guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reversed the district court's decision declining the petitioners' writ of habeas corpus.
The Outreau case refers to a criminal case of pedophilia which took place between 1997 and 2000 in Outreau in northern France and a partial judicial error which led to provisional detentions between 2001 and 2004. Following alerts launched by social services within the Delay family, a long investigation seemed to reveal an extensive pedophile network: around forty adults had been accused and around fifty children were potentially victims.
Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936), was a United States Supreme Court case that ruled that a defendant's involuntary confession that is extracted by the use of force on the part of law enforcement cannot be entered as evidence and violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
James Alan Gell is an American who was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder in 1998 and sentenced to death in Bertie County, North Carolina, at the age of 22. He served nine years as an inmate on death row before being acquitted in a second trial in 2004; he was freed from prison and exonerated that year. He was the 113th person to be freed from death row in the United States.
Mohammed Munaf is an Iraqi–American terrorist convicted in 2008 for his role in the March 2005 kidnapping of three Romanian journalists in Iraq. He was convicted of terrorism charges in Romania and served 7 out of the 10 years of his sentence and was freed on July 6, 2022. In addition to his conviction in Romania, he was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court in October 2006 for his involvement in the kidnapping of the Romanian journalists in 2005, but his conviction was vacated on technical grounds by the Iraqi Court of Cassation on February 29, 2008, and remanded to the lower court for retrial. His habeas corpus petition to prevent his transfer to the Iraqi government was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied certiorari; the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in Munaf v. Geren, which rejected Munaf's claims and ruled that his transfer to Iraqi custody was legally valid, was therefore allowed to stand.
The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.
The Jeanine Nicarico murder case was a complex and influential homicide investigation and prosecution in which two men, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, both Latinos, were wrongfully convicted of abduction, rape and murder in 1985 in DuPage County, Illinois. They were both sentenced to death. The case was scrutinized during appeals for being weak in evidence.
Pre-trial detention, also known as jail, preventive detention, provisional detention, or remand, is the process of detaining a person until their trial after they have been arrested and charged with an offence. A person who is on remand is held in a prison or detention centre or held under house arrest. Varying terminology is used, but "remand" is generally used in common law jurisdictions and "preventive detention" elsewhere. However, in the United States, "remand" is rare except in official documents and "jail" is instead the main terminology. Detention before charge is commonly referred to as custody and continued detention after conviction is referred to as imprisonment.
Martin "Marty" Taccetta is an imprisoned New Jersey mobster who was the alleged boss of the Jersey Crew, a powerful faction of the Lucchese crime family.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:
Rolando Cruz is an American man known for having been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, along with co-defendant Alejandro Hernandez, for the 1983 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in DuPage County, Illinois. The police had no substantive physical evidence linking the two men to the crime. Their first trial was jointly in 1987, and their statements were used against each other and a third defendant.
Ludwig v. Massachusetts, 427 U.S. 618 (1976), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Massachusetts two-tier court system did not deprive Ludwig of his U.S. Const., Amend. XIV right to a jury trial and did not violate the double jeopardy clause of the U.S. Const., Amend. V.
The Martinsville Seven were a group of seven African-American men from Martinsville, Virginia, who were all executed in 1951 by the state of Virginia after being convicted of raping a white woman. At the time of their arrest, all but one were between the ages of 18 and 23. They were quickly tried in six separate trials, and each was convicted and sentenced to death. It was the largest mass execution for rape that had been reported in the United States. On August 31, 2021, the Governor of Virginia pardoned the convictions of all seven men, 70 years after their deaths.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in Canada.
Carter v. Kentucky was a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that trial judges in criminal proceedings must, upon proper request of the defendant, inform the jury of his right against self-incrimination, and that its execution may not be used against him.
