Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration.
The Brownstone Lane murders were the mass murders of four people at a residence on Brownstone Lane in Houston, Texas. On June 20, 1992, three men tied up six people and shot all of them in the head execution-style. Four of the six victims died. The perpetrators: Marion Butler Dudley, Arthur "Squirt" Brown Jr., and Antonio "Tony" Lamone Dunson were convicted of capital murder. Dudley and Brown were sentenced to death, while Dunson was sentenced to life in prison.
Brandon Wade Hein was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for his involvement in the 1995 stabbing murder of 16-year-old Jimmy Farris, the son of a Los Angeles Police Department officer. Hein and two other youths who were present when the murder took place, as well as the actual killer, and were convicted under the felony murder rule because the murder was committed during the course of a felony – the attempted robbery of marijuana kept for sale by Farris's friend, Michael McLoren. Under the felony murder rule, any participant in a felony is criminally responsible for any death that occurs during its commission. In 2009, Hein's life sentence was commuted to 29 years to life.
Samuel George Hurd, III is a former American football wide receiver and convicted drug dealer. He was in the National Football League (NFL) for the Dallas Cowboys and Chicago Bears, and played college football at Northern Illinois University.
Ewing v. California, 538 U.S. 11 (2003), is one of two cases upholding a sentence imposed under California's three strikes law against a challenge that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. As in its prior decision in Harmelin v. Michigan, the United States Supreme Court could not agree on the precise reasoning to uphold the sentence. But, with the decision in Ewing and the companion case Lockyer v. Andrade, the Court effectively foreclosed criminal defendants from arguing that their non-capital sentences were disproportional to the crime they had committed.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
The Dallas Police Department, established in 1881, is the principal law enforcement agency serving the city of Dallas, Texas.
Keith Eugene Wells was an American murderer convicted of the 1990 murders of John Justad and Brandi Rains in Boise, Idaho. He was executed in 1994 by the state of Idaho at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution via lethal injection, only one year and nine months after having been sentenced to death by Judge Gerald Schroeder. Wells was the first person to be executed in Idaho since 1957, and only the tenth since Idaho gained statehood. He chose not to appeal the death sentence, although it was appealed on his behalf. The United States Supreme Court rejected an appeal filed against his wishes.
Misdemeanor murder is a term used to describe a situation in which a person is suspected of murder, but there is not enough evidence to convict the suspect of murder in court. The suspect is then either released without charges or the suspect receives a sentence that is similar to a sentence given to a person charged with a misdemeanor. It is not an official term and it is not an offense defined by the criminal code of the United States or any state thereof.
The U.S. state of Maryland has various policies regarding the production, sale, and use of different classes and kinds of drugs.
Joshua Aaron Price-Brent is a former American football defensive tackle who played in National Football League (NFL) for five seasons with the Dallas Cowboys. He played college football at Illinois and was selected by the Cowboys in the seventh round of the 2010 NFL Supplemental Draft. Brent’s career was cut short by a DUI car crash in 2012 that killed his teammate Jerry Brown, leading to him retiring two years later.
Cornelius Dupree Jr. is an American who was declared innocent of a 1980 conviction for aggravated robbery, which was alleged to have been committed during a rape in 1979. He was paroled in July 2010 after serving 30 years of a 75-year prison sentence in Texas. Prosecutors cleared him of the crime after a test of his DNA profile did not match traces of semen evidence from the case. Dupree, who was represented by the Innocence Project, spent more time in prison in Texas than any other inmate who was eventually exonerated by DNA evidence.
"Very Tough Love" is a radio documentary and an episode of This American Life (TAL), which originally aired on March 25, 2011. The segment described a drug court and program in Glynn County, Georgia, which conducts itself in a manner unlike other drug courts throughout the United States. Offenders with no prior criminal record or history of drug abuse or addiction, charged with possession of small drug quantities, would wind up under drug court control for five years or more. In most other jurisdictions, the same offenses would result in probation or a drug education class. These charges went contrary to drug court philosophy, according to standards set by the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.
Ethan Anthony Couch is an American who, at age 16, killed four people while driving under the influence on June 15, 2013, in Burleson, Texas. Couch, while intoxicated and under the influence of drugs, was driving on a restricted license and speeding in a residential area when he lost control of his vehicle, colliding with a group of people assisting another driver with a disabled SUV. Four people were killed in the collision, and nine people were injured. Two passengers in Couch's pickup truck suffered serious injuries, with one passenger suffering complete paralysis.
People v. Turner, formally The People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner (2015), is a high-profile criminal case in which Brock Allen Turner was convicted by jury trial of three counts of felony sexual assault.
Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400 (1965), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving the application of the right of to confront accusers in state court proceedings. The Sixth Amendment in the Bill of Rights states that, in criminal prosecutions, the defendant has a right "...to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor..." In this case, a person arrested in Texas for robbery was deprived of the ability to cross-examine a witness when the lower court allowed the introduction of a transcript of that witness's earlier testimony at a preliminary proceeding instead of compelling attendance by the witness at trial.
On the night of September 6, 2018, 26-year-old accountant Botham Jean was murdered when off-duty Dallas Police Department patrol officer Amber Guyger entered Jean's apartment in Dallas, Texas, and fatally shot him. Guyger, who said that she had entered Jean's apartment believing it was her own and believed Jean to be a burglar, was initially charged with manslaughter. The absence of a murder charge led to protests and accusations of racial bias, since Jean was a black man and unarmed and was killed in his own home by a white off-duty officer who had apparently disregarded police protocols. On November 30, 2018, Guyger was indicted on a charge of murder. On October 1, 2019, she was found guilty of murder, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment the following day. The ruling was upheld on appeal in 2021.
Bobby Bostic is an American writer who was sentenced to a term of 241 years. On December 12, 1995, Bostic, aged 16, along with 18-year-old Donald Hutson robbed a group of people in Missouri at gunpoint, and shortly thereafter robbed and briefly detained a woman in her car. The pair were caught later that day. Hutson was offered a plea deal and accepted 30 years in prison. On the advice of family, Bostic declined the same offer and elected to go to trial. He was given a sentence of 241 years by Judge Evelyn Baker, making him eligible for parole when he is 112. Bostic was serving the longest sentence in Missouri given to a juvenile for non-homicide offenses.
During February 2006, Brian Bethell, a 40-year-old man from The Bahamas, shot and killed three men in Broward County, Florida, for the purpose of robbery. Video surveillance of Bethell using the victims' credit cards was examined, and on February 26, he was arrested along with his girlfriend. Bethell, who confessed, would die before his trial could begin.
Brandon Dewayne Johnson is an American spree killer who killed three men and wounded eight others during a series of violent robberies between September 2008 and January 2009 in Little Rock, Arkansas. After he was found to be mentally disabled, Johnson pleaded guilty to three counts of first degree murder and other charges and was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
