3,576 articles
Statutory rape
Statutory rape: sexual intercourse with a person below the age of consent, criminal regardless of willingness and usually without force; also called carnal knowledge or corruption of a minor. Strict liability as to age, with close-in-age and marital exceptions varying by jurisdiction.
Stay of execution
Stay of execution: a court order temporarily postponing enforcement of a death sentence, granted under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2251 and 2262, Supreme Court five-vote rule, AEDPA limits, and 2024 emergency-docket practice.
Stella Nickell
Stella Nickell, Auburn, Washington woman convicted in 1988 under the Federal Anti-Tampering Act for cyanide-lacing Excedrin capsules that killed her husband Bruce Nickell and Sue Snow in a 1986 insurance scheme.
Stéphane Breitwieser
Stéphane Breitwieser, French art thief from Alsace, stole 239 works from about 170 European museums, 1994–2001, never selling any; his mother destroyed much of the loot after his 2001 Lucerne arrest.
Stephanie St. Clair
Stephanie St. Clair, "Madam Queen" or "Queen of Numbers" (born 1897 Guadeloupe or 1887, died 1969), was a French Caribbean-born Harlem policy banker who fought Dutch Schultz and the police before ceding the numbers racket to Lucky Luciano's Mafia.
Stephen Corey Bryant
Stephen Corey Bryant was an American convicted murderer who received a death sentence for the murder of Willard “T.J.” Tietjen and life sentences for the murders of Clifton Gainey and Christopher Burgess.
Stephen Flemmi
Stephen 'The Rifleman' Flemmi, Boston Winter Hill Gang lieutenant under Whitey Bulger and FBI informant from 1965; pleaded guilty to ten murders, admitted about 50 killings, and is serving life imprisonment.
Stephen Port
Stephen Port, born 1975, is the British 'Grindr killer', a serial killer convicted in 2016 of murdering four young gay men with GHB overdoses in Barking, London, 2014-2015; he received a whole life order amid documented Metropolitan Police investigation failures.
Stephen Ward
Stephen Ward, London osteopath and society portraitist who introduced Christine Keeler to John Profumo in 1961; convicted of living on immoral earnings in 1963, he died by overdose on the last day of his Old Bailey trial.
Steubenville High School rape case
The Steubenville High School rape case: 2012 Ohio case in which football players Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond were found delinquent for raping an intoxicated 16-year-old, documented on social media, prompting an Anonymous campaign and a grand jury.
Steven Avery
Steven Avery: Wisconsin man exonerated by DNA in 2003 after 18 years for a 1985 rape (Gregory Allen identified), later convicted in 2007 of murdering Teresa Halbach, subject of Making a Murderer.
Steven Jay Russell
Steven Jay Russell is an American con artist known for audacious nonviolent escapes from Texan jails in the 1990s; he served a 144-year sentence until his 2024 parole.
Steven Kazmierczak
Steven Phillip Kazmierczak, NIU shooter, killed five students and wounded many in Cole Hall, DeKalb, Illinois, on February 14, 2008, before killing himself; distinct from the unrelated 2025 Omar town hall assailant.
Steven Lawayne Nelson
Steven Lawayne Nelson (died February 5, 2025) was a Texas death row inmate executed for the 2011 robbery-murder of pastor Clint Dobson at NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington; convicted 2012 under the law of parties, also killed inmate Jonathon Holden in jail.
Steven Lorenzo
Steven Lorenzo (born 1959) is a Florida death row inmate who pleaded guilty to the 2003 GHB-facilitated murders of Jason Galehouse and Michael Wachholtz in Tampa, after a 200-year federal sentence; his death sentences were affirmed in 2025.
Steven Pladl triple murder and suicide
Steven Pladl triple murder and suicide: on April 12, 2018 Pladl killed his infant son Bennett in Knightdale, NC, shot his daughter-wife Katie Pladl and her adoptive father Anthony Fusco in New Milford, CT, then died by suicide in Wingdale, NY, after incest arrests.
Steven Ray Thacker
Steven Ray Thacker (born 1970), also known as David Wilson, was an American triple murderer executed in Oklahoma on March 12, 2013, for the 1999 rape-murder of Laci Dawn Hill and killings in Missouri and Tennessee.
Steven Stayner
Steven Stayner, American kidnapping victim abducted at age 7 from Merced, California, on December 4, 1972, by Kenneth Parnell; escaped March 1, 1980, with fellow victim Timmy White; brother Cary Stayner later became the Yosemite murders serial killer.
Sting operation
Sting operation: covert police tactic creating or exploiting a crime opportunity to arrest offenders in the act; also called undercover decoy operations; distinguished from entrapment, which involves improper government inducement.
Stocks
Stocks are a wooden restraint device locking an offender's ankles for public humiliation, distinct from the pillory, which locks head and hands. Used from Solon's Athens through medieval and early modern Europe; pillory abolished in England 1837, stocks last used 1872.
Stolen Valor Act of 2013
Stolen Valor Act of 2013, Public Law 113-12, a US federal law amending 18 U.S.C. 704 to criminalize fraudulent claims of military decorations made for tangible gain, enacted after the Supreme Court struck down the 2005 Act in United States v. Alvarez.
Stoneman
Stoneman: press-given name for unidentified killer(s) of sleeping pavement dwellers in Mumbai (mid-1980s) and Kolkata (13 deaths from June 1989), heads crushed with stones or slabs; never solved, no conviction, single-killer theory unproven.
Stoning
Stoning (lapidation, rajm) is execution by group stone-throwing. Known from Biblical law, developed as a zina punishment in Islamic law, authorized by nine countries but rarely used judicially; UN bodies deem it torture.
Stop and identify statutes
Stop and identify statutes: US state laws requiring a person lawfully detained on reasonable suspicion to state a name, also called Hiibel laws. Upheld name-only in Hiibel v. Nevada (2004); limited by Brown v. Texas and Kolender v. Lawson.
Stop-and-frisk in New York City
Stop-and-frisk in New York City is a police practice allowing officers to stop, question, and frisk people on reasonable suspicion, peaking at nearly 700,000 stops in 2011.
Strafgesetzbuch
Strafgesetzbuch (StGB), Germany's criminal code since 15 May 1871; General Part rebuilt 1 January 1975; Verbrechen vs Vergehen, murder section 211, current version consolidated 1998.
Strafgesetzbuch section 86a
§ 86a StGB, Germany's Criminal Code provision on use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations: three-year maximum penalty, lookalike rule, social adequacy exemptions, key constitutional and ECHR case law.
Strain theory (sociology)
Strain theory (sociology): criminological tradition from Merton's 1938 anomie theory to Agnew's 1992 general strain theory, explaining crime as a response to blocked goals, loss of valued stimuli, and negative stimuli.
Stranger danger
Stranger danger: child-safety slogan warning children against unfamiliar adults, and the name criminologists give the 1980s American child-abduction moral panic; critique holds that most harm to children comes from people they know.
Strangling
Strangling is compression of the neck or restriction of breathing, causing loss of consciousness or death; non-fatal strangulation is a domestic abuse risk indicator now a specific offence in England and Wales (2022), New York (2010), and New Zealand.