49 Fun Facts About Criminal Justice

The 1966 Supreme Court case requiring police to inform suspects of their rights is named after which defendant?

Ernesto Miranda won his case, but prosecutors retried him without the confession and he was convicted again in 1967.

Gideon v Wainwright (1963) required state courts to provide defendants with what?

A lawyer made the difference: retried with counsel, Clarence Earl Gideon was acquitted of the Florida break-in that had sent him to prison.

Mapp v Ohio (1961) applied which doctrine to state prosecutions?

The exclusionary rule overturned Dollree Mapp's conviction for obscene books that police found during an illegal search of her home for a fugitive.

Terry v Ohio (1968) held that police may 'stop and frisk' someone on what standard?

Reasonable suspicion was enough for a plainclothes officer who watched men repeatedly pace past a store window, then frisked them and found pistols.

Batson v Kentucky (1986) barred prosecutors from using peremptory challenges to exclude jurors based on what?

Race was the issue: a prosecutor struck all four Black potential jurors, and an all-white jury convicted James Batson of burglary.

Brady v Maryland (1963) requires prosecutors to hand the defence what?

Exculpatory evidence was at stake: prosecutors hid a companion's confession to the killing, so John Brady won a new sentencing hearing.

Furman v Georgia (1972) led to what across the United States?

A de facto moratorium on executions held until states rewrote their laws, and Gregg v. Georgia approved Georgia's new separate sentencing hearings in 1976.

Which amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures?

The Fourth Amendment answered British writs of assistance, which had let colonial officers rummage through homes in unrestrained searches.

The right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury comes from which amendment?

The Sixth Amendment's jury right reached state courts in 1968 after Louisiana refused a jury to Gary Duncan, a Black teenager accused of slapping a white youth.

Which amendment forbids excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment?

The Eighth Amendment nearly copies a clause of England's 1689 Bill of Rights, a clause aimed at excessive and arbitrary punishments.

What does the Latin legal maxim 'non bis in idem' mean?

Not twice against the same, roughly, is the rule behind double jeopardy, yet a US state and the federal government may each prosecute one act as separate sovereigns.

Judge Sol Wachtler was quoted saying prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict what?

A ham sandwich, he said, yet Sol Wachtler was later charged himself over threats to a former lover, and he pleaded guilty.

Which US vice president resigned in 1973 in a tax evasion plea deal?

Spiro Agnew's deal dropped the corruption charges against him, leaving a $10,000 fine and three years of probation instead of prison.

The Latin phrase habeas corpus, the writ challenging unlawful detention, literally refers to what?

Having the body brought to court is the writ's demand, yet in 1861 Abraham Lincoln ignored Chief Justice Taney's ruling that only Congress could suspend it.

In medieval English common law, what penalty originally set a felony apart from lesser crimes?

Confiscation of land and goods marked a felony, so even a person who died by suicide, legally a felon against himself, had his property forfeited to the Crown.

Who became director of the Bureau of Investigation, the FBI's forerunner, in 1924?

J. Edgar Hoover rebuilt the scandal-hit bureau into a professional force, and he stayed in charge until his death in 1972.

London's Metropolitan Police was founded in 1829 by which Home Secretary?

Robert Peel had already built a paid police force in Ireland, whose constables were called 'peelers' before London's 'bobbies' took his name too.

The Judiciary Act of 1789 created which US federal law enforcement officers?

US Marshals also took the first national census in 1790, and they kept taking the count every decade through 1870.

Which US agency was created in 1865 to fight counterfeit money?

The Secret Service's counterfeiting mission kept it in the Treasury Department until 2003, when it moved into the new Department of Homeland Security.

The Drug Enforcement Administration was created in 1973 under which president?

Richard Nixon had declared drug abuse 'public enemy number one' in 1971, two years before he created the DEA to lead that fight.

Which future New York mayor prosecuted Mafia bosses under RICO?

Rudy Giuliani's case leaned on a bug hidden in a mobster's Jaguar, which recorded bosses talking as he drove them around.

Interpol was founded in 1923 in which city?

Vienna's police chief convened the founding congress, but in 1938 Nazi Germany seized control of the commission and later moved its headquarters to Berlin.

Interpol moved its headquarters in 1989 to which French city?

Lyon's headquarters sends out red notices, but Interpol agents do not make arrests; that is left to each member country's own police.

Colin Pitchfork, sentenced in 1988, was the first person convicted of murder using what?

DNA profiling caught Colin Pitchfork even though he had persuaded another man to give a sample in his place during the mass screening.

Fingerprint examiners sort prints into three basic patterns: arches, whorls and what?

Loops, arches and whorls became the basis of Edward Henry's classification system, which police forces across the English-speaking world adopted.

In 1921 John Larson, a Berkeley physiologist with a doctorate, built the polygraph while working as what?

A city police officer in Berkeley, John Larson later regretted the lie detector, calling it a Frankenstein's monster he had spent over 40 years combating.

Innocence Project founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld served on which celebrity's murder trial defense team?

O. J. Simpson's defense had them attack how police collected the blood evidence, the kind of forensic proof their project uses to free the wrongly convicted.

Which cobbler began US probation in 1841 by persuading a judge to release a 'drunkard' into his custody?

John Augustus brought the man back to court sober, then kept bailing out and supervising offenders as an unpaid volunteer for 18 years.

What did the 1962 Alcatraz escapees leave in their beds to fool guards?

Dummy heads with real hair fooled the night guards, and in 1979 the FBI closed its case with no credible sign that the three men had survived.

Which gangster did Eastern State Penitentiary hold in 1929?

Al Capone had been arrested in Philadelphia for carrying a concealed gun, and he was sentenced to a year in prison.

The Auburn system of the 19th century had prisoners work together by day under what rule?

Enforced silence was part of the American prison experiments that Alexis de Tocqueville crossed from France to study in 1831, a trip that also gave rise to Democracy in America.

Sing Sing prison, said to have inspired the slang 'up the river', is in which New York village?

Ossining was itself called Sing Sing until 1901, when the village changed its name so it would stop being confused with the prison.

Which celebrity served five months at Alderson federal prison camp from 2004?

Martha Stewart was convicted not of insider trading but of obstructing justice and lying to investigators about her sale of ImClone shares.

What was Cesare Beccaria's 1764 treatise condemning torture and the death penalty titled?

On Crimes and Punishments came out when Cesare Beccaria was only 26, and a French translation soon carried his case against torture across Europe.

Which philosopher conceived the Panopticon prison design?

Jeremy Bentham's plan was not fully adopted in his day, but later prisons borrowed it, among them Stateville near Joliet, Illinois.

The 'broken windows' theory of policing was introduced in a 1982 article in which magazine?

James Q. Wilson and George Kelling argued that visible disorder invites more serious crime; the idea shaped 1990s New York policing.

Where did the landmark 1972-73 experiment on whether patrol levels affect crime take place?

Kansas City police dropped routine patrols in some beats and doubled or tripled them in others, yet crime and fear of crime did not differ significantly.

The first true 'three-strikes' sentencing law was passed by voters in which state in 1993?

Washington's law targeted repeat violent and serious felons, yet in its first three years fewer offenders struck out than state planners had projected.

Which country's mass gang crackdown gave it the world's highest incarceration rate by 2023?

El Salvador declared a state of emergency in March 2022 after a weekend of gang killings, suspending some rights so police could arrest suspected gang members en masse.

Which English king's Assize of Clarendon had sworn local juries report suspected robbers and murderers?

Henry II's juries only accused suspects, who then had to face the ordeal of water, and anyone convicted forfeited his goods and chattels to the king.

Evidence derived from an illegal search is known by what botanical phrase?

Fruit of the poisonous tree can still be used at trial if police would inevitably have found the evidence anyway, or also found it by independent, lawful means.

The warnings police must read to suspects in custody rest chiefly on which amendment to the US Constitution?

Fifth Amendment roots made the warnings a constitutional rule, so in 2000 the Supreme Court held that a 1968 law Congress passed to override them could not.

Which president's 1901 assassination led to full-time protection for US presidents?

William McKinley was shot while shaking hands with the public in Buffalo, and doctors predicted he would recover before gangrene killed him eight days later.

Which factor does the Innocence Project say played a role in the most wrongful convictions later overturned?

Eyewitness mistakes sent Kirk Bloodsworth to death row on the word of five witnesses, and he spent more than nine years in prison before he was cleared.

Which Berkeley police chief set up a criminal justice programme at UC Berkeley in 1916?

August Vollmer put Berkeley officers on bicycles, then motorcycles and patrol cars, and was the first police chief to require college degrees.

In 1838, which US city gained the legal power to appoint officers for a day police force?

Boston's day police ran apart from its old night watch until 1854, when the city replaced both with a single police department.

Which 1968 law created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration?

The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act set up an agency that sent block grants to the states to fight crime, yet it was abolished in 1982.

Which verdict can a US jury never actually return, whatever the evidence?

Innocent is never the finding, because a verdict of not guilty only means the proof failed to overcome all reasonable doubt of guilt.

Members of which religious group were prominent among the founders of Philadelphia's 1787 prison reform society?

Quakers helped found the society, yet it was nondenominational from the start, and an Episcopal bishop, William White, led it for 49 years.