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.
Nolo contendere is a type of legal plea used in some jurisdictions in the United States. It is also referred to as a plea of no contest or no defense. It is a plea where the defendant neither admits nor disputes a charge, serving as an alternative to a pleading of guilty or not guilty. A no-contest plea, while not technically a guilty plea, typically has the same immediate effect as a guilty plea and is often offered as a part of a plea bargain.
A plea bargain is an agreement in criminal law proceedings, whereby the prosecutor provides a concession to the defendant in exchange for a plea of guilt or nolo contendere. This may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to a less serious charge, or to one of the several charges, in return for the dismissal of other charges; or it may mean that the defendant will plead guilty to the original criminal charge in return for a more lenient sentence.
The Cuban Five, also known as the Miami Five, are five Cuban intelligence officers who were arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miami of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and other illegal activities in the United States. The Five were in the United States to observe and infiltrate the Cuban-American groups Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue. They were part of La Red Avispa composed of at least 27 Cuban spies.
Debra Jean Williams, better known under her former married name of Debra Lafave, is a convicted sex offender who formerly taught at Angelo L. Greco Middle School in Temple Terrace, Florida. In 2005, she pleaded guilty to lewd or lascivious battery against a teenager. The charges stemmed from a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old student in mid-2004. Lafave's plea bargain included no prison time, opting for three years of house arrest due to safety concerns, seven years of probation, and lifetime registration as a sex offender.
Ana Belén Montes is a former American senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency in the United States who spied on behalf of the Cuban government for 17 years.
The Federal Medical Center, Carswell is a United States federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, for female inmates of all security levels, primarily with special medical and mental health needs. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility also has a prison camp for minimum-security female inmates.
Ladies in White is an opposition movement in Cuba founded in 2003 by wives and other female relatives of jailed dissidents and those who have been made to disappear by the government. The women protest the imprisonments by attending Mass each Sunday wearing white dresses and then silently walking through the streets dressed in white clothing. The color white is chosen to symbolize peace.
Carlos Manuel Alvarez is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Florida International University who, along with his second wife Elsa, was charged in January 2006 with treason. He was arrested in January 2006, and pleaded guilty to conspiracy. On February 27, 2007, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
The Bad Newz Kennels dog fighting investigation began in April 2007 with a search of property in Surry County, Virginia, owned by Michael Vick, who was at the time quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons football team, and the subsequent discovery of evidence of a dog fighting ring. Over seventy dogs, mostly pit bull terriers, with some said to be showing signs of injuries, were seized, along with physical evidence during several searches of Vick's 15-acre (61,000 m2) property by local, state and federal authorities.
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.
Ellis S. Rubin was an American attorney who gained national fame for handling a variety of highly publicized cases in a legal career that spanned 53 years. He was famous for his innovative defenses and his propensity for handling lost causes. Rubin won the first case in Florida using the “battered woman” defense. He also worked to free a man, James Joseph Richardson, who had been wrongly imprisoned for 21 years for fatally poisoning his seven children, and created the nymphomania defense in a case involving prostitution.
In 1985, a group of high-ranking Rajneeshees, followers of the Indian mystic Shree Rajneesh, conspired to assassinate Charles Turner, the then-United States Attorney for the District of Oregon. Rajneesh's personal secretary and second-in-command, Ma Anand Sheela, assembled the group after Turner was appointed to investigate illegal activity at the followers' community, Rajneeshpuram. Turner investigated charges of immigration fraud and sham marriages, and later headed the federal prosecution of the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack in The Dalles, Oregon.
Carol Kisthardt is an American military lawyer and senior investigator with the national Naval Criminal Investigation Service. Kisthardt was a leading presenter on the role of the NCIS at numerous law enforcement conferences. She was a lead investigator in the investigations of Carlos and Elsa Alvarez, two Florida International University professors accused of spying for Cuba. In 2006, she investigated three suicides at Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
This page lists trials related to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Walter Kendall Myers is a former U.S. State Department employee who, with his wife, Gwendolyn, was arrested and indicted on June 4, 2009, on charges of spying for Cuba for nearly 30 years. He was convicted of espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment by a U.S. federal court in July 2010.
In May 2012, 31-year-old Marissa Alexander was prosecuted for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and received a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. Alexander said that she fired a warning shot after her husband attacked her and threatened to kill her on August 1, 2010, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Wasp Network is a 2019 spy thriller film written and directed by Olivier Assayas, based on the book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War by Fernando Morais. It stars Penélope Cruz, Édgar Ramírez, Gael García Bernal, Ana de Armas and Wagner Moura. It tells the true story of Cuban spies in American territory during the 1990s.
