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Strangulation in domestic violence
Strangulation in domestic violence is neck compression by an intimate partner or family member; it can kill within minutes and often leaves no visible injury.
Strappado
Strappado (Spanish garrucha, Italian strappata) is a pulley torture: hands tied behind the back, victim hoisted and dropped with a jerk, dislocating shoulders. Used by medieval and Spanish Inquisitions, Templar and witch trials, and secular courts across Europe.
Straw purchase
Straw purchase: a buy made by one person on behalf of another, chiefly in U.S. firearms law (18 U.S.C. §932, Abramski), also straw buyers in mortgage, auto loan, and campaign finance fraud.
Street prostitution
Street prostitution is the most publicly visible segment of sex work, involving sales in public spaces. Its practice is heavily dictated by a jurisdiction's legal model.
Stress position
Stress positions: forced postures held for prolonged periods in interrogation, a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment used from Northern Ireland's five techniques to US 'war on terror' custody.
Strict liability (criminal)
Strict liability in criminal law: conviction without proof of mens rea, used mainly for regulatory and public welfare offenses such as possession and statutory rape; exemplified by R v Woodrow (1846) and moderated by due diligence defences in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Strip search phone call scam
Strip search phone call scam: 1994-2004 US hoax calls in which a caller posing as a police officer made fast-food managers strip-search employees; centered on the 2004 Mount Washington, Kentucky McDonald's case and suspect David R. Stewart, who was acquitted.
Sture Bergwall
Sture Bergwall, alias Thomas Quick, the Swede who confessed to over thirty murders, was convicted of eight (1994–2001), recanted in 2008, and was acquitted of all eight in 2013; the Bergwall Commission found systemic flaws.
Sugamo Prison
Sugamo Prison (巣鴨プリズン), a Tokyo prison in Ikebukuro run by the US 8th Army from 1945, held Japanese war criminals including Hideki Tojo until the last releases in 1958; the Sunshine City complex now occupies the site.
Suicide of Audrie Pott
The suicide of Audrie Pott was the 2012 death of a 15-year-old Saratoga High School sophomore who killed herself eight days after being sexually assaulted at a house party.
Suicide of Joe Gliniewicz
Suicide of Joe Gliniewicz: Fox Lake, Illinois lieutenant Charles Joseph "G.I. Joe" Gliniewicz shot himself on September 1, 2015, staging his death as a murder to hide seven years of embezzlement from the Police Explorer program.
Suicide of Ricardo Alfonso Cerna
Ricardo Alfonso Cerna (1956-2003), Guatemalan immigrant, shot San Bernardino County Deputy Michael Parham during a December 19, 2003 traffic stop in Muscoy, California, then killed himself with an undetected .45-caliber handgun in a sheriff's interview room, on videotape.
Suicide of Vince Foster
Suicide of Vince Foster: Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster Jr. died by gunshot at Fort Marcy Park, Virginia, July 20, 1993. Five investigations (Park Police, DOJ, House, Senate, Starr) ruled it suicide; conspiracy theories and the Favish FOIA case followed.
Suicide watch
Suicide watch is heightened monitoring of incarcerated people at imminent risk of suicide, from 5–15 minute checks to constant observation, often with tear-resistant smocks and padded cells; execution failures and solitary placement are documented harms.
Sukumara Kurup
Sukumara Kurup (സുകുമാരക്കുറുപ്പ്, born Gopalakrishna Kurup) is Kerala's longest-absconding fugitive, prime accused in the 1984 murder of film representative KJ Chacko in a Rs 8 lakh insurance-fraud plot; untried and untraced for over 40 years.
Sumiyoshi-kai (住吉会)
The Sumiyoshi-kai (住吉会) is Japan's second-largest designated yakuza group, headquartered in Akasaka, Tokyo, a Tokyo gambling-association federation descended from the Meiji-era Sumiyoshi-ikka, renamed in 1991.
Summary execution
Summary execution: killing as punishment without full due process, defined by UN Special Rapporteur Amos Wako, prohibited by the 1989 UN Principles on extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions, with no superior-orders defense in war or emergency.
Summary offence
A summary offence is a minor criminal offence tried only by a magistrate without a jury, as in England and Wales magistrates' courts, Canada's summary conviction offences, and Australia's Local Courts, with six-month prosecution time limits and reduced police powers.
Summis desiderantes affectibus
Summis desiderantes affectibus, 1484 papal bull of Pope Innocent VIII favoring witch trials, associated with Kramer and Sprenger's Malleus maleficarum (1487) and the canon-law inquisitorial procedure later codified in the Carolina of 1532.
Sun Gym gang
Sun Gym gang: Miami bodybuilders led by Daniel Lugo and Adrian Doorbal who kidnapped and extorted Marc Schiller (1994) and murdered Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton (1995); death sentences commuted to life in 2024; basis of Pain & Gain.
Sun Yee On (新义安)
Sun Yee On (新義安) is one of Hong Kong's largest triad societies, alongside 14K and Wo Shing Wo. Founded from a Chiu Chow workers' trade association, it is linked to drug trafficking, the Sinaloa cartel, and major 2025 police crackdowns.
Sundance Kid
Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh), American outlaw (1867-1908) and sidekick of Butch Cassidy in the Wild Bunch; named for Sundance, Wyoming jail term; fled to Argentina 1901; died in San Vicente, Bolivia, 1908.
Sunny Balwani
Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani (born 1965) is an American businessman, Theranos president and COO 2009-2016 and Elizabeth Holmes's former partner, convicted in 2022 on 12 fraud counts, sentenced to 155 months, and set for release in 2033.
Superior orders
Superior orders, or obedience to superior orders, is a criminal-law plea that an act was done on a superior's command. Denied by the Nuremberg and Tokyo charters, it survives at the ICC under Rome Statute Article 33 only for war crimes where the order was not manifestly unlawful.
Supermax prison
A supermax prison is a prison or unit for disruptive or violent inmates, controlled through isolation and restricted movement, first developed in the United States in the 1980s.
Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal
Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (Iraqi Special Tribunal, then Iraqi High Tribunal): special Iraqi court created by CPA Order 48 in December 2003, renamed under Law No. 10 of 2005, trying genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed 1968–2003, notably the Dujail and Anfal trials.
Supreme Team (gang)
Supreme Team, Queens, New York street gang founded 1981 by Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff in Baisley Park Houses, South Jamaica; Five Percenter roots, $200,000-a-day 1987 peak, led later by Gerald "Prince" Miller, ended in federal RICO life sentences.
Sureños
Sureños (Sur 13), Southern California-origin alliance of Mexican-American street gangs subordinate to the Mexican Mafia prison gang; blue, number 13; hundreds of cliques across the US and El Salvador.
Surrey Six massacre
Surrey Six massacre: October 19, 2007 shooting of six men, four gang-affiliated and two bystanders, in a Balmoral Tower apartment in Surrey, BC, tied to the Red Scorpions-UN gang conflict; convictions ran from 2009 to 2020.
Susan Atkins
Susan Denise Atkins (1948-2009), "Sadie Mae Glutz" in Charles Manson's Family, took part in the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders including Sharon Tate's killing, was sentenced to death in 1971 (commuted to life), and died of brain cancer after 38 years in prison.