Criminal Justice Trivia
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This criminal justice trivia quiz has 99 free questions with answers and covers the whole system: policing, courts and corrections. You will find the landmark Supreme Court cases every student learns (Miranda, Gideon, Mapp, Terry, Batson, Brady, Furman and Gregg), the amendments behind them, and how grand juries, plea bargains, bail and habeas corpus actually work. The history side runs from Cesare Beccaria and Bentham's Panopticon to Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police, the first DNA conviction, the invention of the polygraph, Alcatraz's famous escape and the Kansas City patrol experiment. Agencies like the FBI, DEA, Secret Service, US Marshals and Interpol get their own questions. It suits criminology students, pre-law classes, police academy study groups and true-crime fans. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 1966 Supreme Court case requiring police to inform suspects of their rights is named after which defendant?
Ernesto Miranda
Ernesto Miranda won his case, but prosecutors retried him without the confession and he was convicted again in 1967.
Q 02Gideon v Wainwright (1963) required state courts to provide defendants with what?
A lawyer
A lawyer made the difference: retried with counsel, Clarence Earl Gideon was acquitted of the Florida break-in that had sent him to prison.
Q 03Mapp v Ohio (1961) applied which doctrine to state prosecutions?
The exclusionary rule
The exclusionary rule overturned Dollree Mapp's conviction for obscene books that police found during an illegal search of her home for a fugitive.
Q 04Terry v Ohio (1968) held that police may 'stop and frisk' someone on what standard?
Reasonable suspicion
Reasonable suspicion was enough for a plainclothes officer who watched men repeatedly pace past a store window, then frisked them and found pistols.
Q 05Batson v Kentucky (1986) barred prosecutors from using peremptory challenges to exclude jurors based on what?
Race
Race was the issue: a prosecutor struck all four Black potential jurors, and an all-white jury convicted James Batson of burglary.
Q 06Brady v Maryland (1963) requires prosecutors to hand the defence what?
Exculpatory evidence
Exculpatory evidence was at stake: prosecutors hid a companion's confession to the killing, so John Brady won a new sentencing hearing.
Q 07Furman v Georgia (1972) led to what across the United States?
A de facto moratorium on executions
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.
Q 08Which amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures?
Fourth
The Fourth Amendment answered British writs of assistance, which had let colonial officers rummage through homes in unrestrained searches.
Q 09The right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury comes from which amendment?
Sixth
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.
Q 10Which amendment forbids excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment?
Eighth
The Eighth Amendment nearly copies a clause of England's 1689 Bill of Rights, a clause aimed at excessive and arbitrary punishments.
Q 11What does the Latin legal maxim 'non bis in idem' mean?
Not twice against the same
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.
Q 12Judge Sol Wachtler was quoted saying prosecutors could get a grand jury to indict what?
A ham sandwich
A ham sandwich, he said, yet Sol Wachtler was later charged himself over threats to a former lover, and he pleaded guilty.
Q 13Which US vice president resigned in 1973 in a tax evasion plea deal?
Spiro Agnew
Spiro Agnew's deal dropped the corruption charges against him, leaving a $10,000 fine and three years of probation instead of prison.
Q 21Which future New York mayor prosecuted Mafia bosses under RICO?
Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani's case leaned on a bug hidden in a mobster's Jaguar, which recorded bosses talking as he drove them around.
Q 22Interpol was founded in 1923 in which city?
Vienna
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.
Q 23Interpol moved its headquarters in 1989 to which French city?
Lyon
Lyon's headquarters sends out red notices, but Interpol agents do not make arrests; that is left to each member country's own police.
Q 14The Latin phrase habeas corpus, the writ challenging unlawful detention, literally refers to what?
Having the body
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.
Q 15In medieval English common law, what penalty originally set a felony apart from lesser crimes?
Confiscation of land and goods
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.
Q 16Who became director of the Bureau of Investigation, the FBI's forerunner, in 1924?
J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover rebuilt the scandal-hit bureau into a professional force, and he stayed in charge until his death in 1972.
Q 17London's Metropolitan Police was founded in 1829 by which Home Secretary?
Robert Peel
Robert Peel had already built a paid police force in Ireland, whose constables were called 'peelers' before London's 'bobbies' took his name too.
Q 18The Judiciary Act of 1789 created which US federal law enforcement officers?
US Marshals
US Marshals also took the first national census in 1790, and they kept taking the count every decade through 1870.
Q 19Which US agency was created in 1865 to fight counterfeit money?
The Secret Service
The Secret Service's counterfeiting mission kept it in the Treasury Department until 2003, when it moved into the new Department of Homeland Security.
Q 20The Drug Enforcement Administration was created in 1973 under which president?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon had declared drug abuse 'public enemy number one' in 1971, two years before he created the DEA to lead that fight.
Q 24Colin Pitchfork, sentenced in 1988, was the first person convicted of murder using what?
DNA profiling
DNA profiling caught Colin Pitchfork even though he had persuaded another man to give a sample in his place during the mass screening.
Q 25Fingerprint examiners sort prints into three basic patterns: arches, whorls and what?
Loops
Loops, arches and whorls became the basis of Edward Henry's classification system, which police forces across the English-speaking world adopted.
Q 26In 1921 John Larson, a Berkeley physiologist with a doctorate, built the polygraph while working as what?
A city police officer
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.
Q 27Innocence Project founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld served on which celebrity's murder trial defense team?
O. J. Simpson
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.
Q 28Which cobbler began US probation in 1841 by persuading a judge to release a 'drunkard' into his custody?
John Augustus
John Augustus brought the man back to court sober, then kept bailing out and supervising offenders as an unpaid volunteer for 18 years.
Q 29What did the 1962 Alcatraz escapees leave in their beds to fool guards?
Dummy heads
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.
Q 30Which gangster did Eastern State Penitentiary hold in 1929?
Al Capone
Al Capone had been arrested in Philadelphia for carrying a concealed gun, and he was sentenced to a year in prison.