3,576 articles
Doris Tate
Doris Tate, mother of murdered actress Sharon Tate, was a California victims' rights activist who helped pass the 1982 victim impact statement law, campaigned against Manson family paroles, and founded the Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau before her 1992 death.
Dorothea Puente
Dorothea Puente, also Dorothea Helen Grey, the "Death House Landlady," ran a Sacramento boarding house at 1426 F Street; convicted 1993 of murdering three tenants for their benefit checks, died in prison 2011.
Double jeopardy
Double jeopardy, or ne bis in idem, bars a second prosecution or punishment for the same offense after acquittal or conviction; covers attachment, Blockburger, mistrials, dual sovereignty, and Erlinger (2024).
Doug Clark (serial killer)
Douglas Daniel Clark, half of the 'Sunset Strip Killers' duo with Carol Bundy, was convicted of six 1980 Los Angeles murders and sentenced to six consecutive death terms; he died on San Quentin's death row in 2023.
Doxbin (darknet)
Doxbin (darknet), also called the Doxbin, is the biggest public doxing website, historically on Tor, hosting over 176,000 doxes with personal data, tied to extortion, swatting, and far-right operators, with mostly denied removal requests.
Doxing
Doxing, also spelled doxxing, is the deliberate public release of personal information like addresses and phone numbers to shame or menace someone, a term from 1990s hacker culture.
DPS MMS scandal
DPS MMS scandal: 2004 Delhi Public School cellphone video case, also called DPS Dhamaka, in which an explicit clip of two underage students spread by MMS and was listed on Bazee.com, triggering arrests including CEO Avnish Bajaj and shaping India's Section 66E IT Act.
Draconian constitution
Draconian constitution: the written code of laws attributed to the Athenian lawgiver Draco, issued c. 621/620 BCE and famous for capital punishment of nearly all offenses; only his homicide law survived Solon's repeal.
Dragnet (franchise)
Dragnet is Jack Webb's American police procedural franchise about LAPD detectives, begun on radio in 1949 and on TV in 1952, starring Joe Friday, with revivals in 1967, 1987, 1989, and 2003.
Dream Market
Dream Market was an English-language Tor darknet marketplace launched 15 November 2013, the largest after AlphaBay's takedown, accepting BTC, BCH, and XMR, which closed voluntarily in March 2019 citing DDoS extortion, unlike raided markets such as Silk Road, AlphaBay, and Hansa.
Drew Peterson
Drew Peterson, former Bolingbrook, Illinois police sergeant, convicted in 2012 of the first-degree murder of third wife Kathleen Savio, sentenced to 38 years; case known for Drew's Law hearsay statute; fourth wife Stacy Peterson missing since 2007.
Drive-by shooting
Drive-by shooting: firing a gun from a motor vehicle at people or property outside it, associated with US gang violence; less lethal than other shootings (41% lower fatality in LA data), criminalized federally since 1994.
Drug barons of Colombia
The drug barons of Colombia, also known as Colombian drug barons, headed the Medellín and Cali cartels that dominated cocaine trafficking from the late 1970s through the 1990s.
Drug cartel
Drug cartel: term coined in the 1980s for Colombia's Medellín and Cali syndicates, now applied chiefly to Mexican DTOs such as Sinaloa and CJNG; large criminal organizations trafficking cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana.
Drug lord
Drug lord (also kingpin): leader of a drug trafficking organization controlling production, smuggling, distribution, and finances. Examples include El Chapo and El Mencho; the DEA's kingpin strategy targets them, with evidence of violence increases after captures.
Dubois brothers
Dubois brothers (frères Dubois), nine siblings from Saint-Henri, Montreal, who ran Quebec's dominant criminal gang from the 1950s to the 1980s; rivals of the McSween gang and Devil's Disciples, undone by the televised 1975-1976 CECO organized crime inquiry.
Ducking stool
Ducking stool, also called cucking stool, an early modern English and colonial American punishment chair on a beam used to duck women convicted as common scolds into water, from about 1550 to the last recorded use in 1809.
Dunbar Armored robbery
Dunbar Armored robbery: $18.9 million armed takeover of the Dunbar Armored depot in Los Angeles on September 13, 1997, led by fired guard Allen Pace III; largest U.S. cash armed robbery until the 2024 GardaWorld heist.
Dungeon
Dungeon: originally the donjon or keep of a medieval castle, later reinterpreted as an underground prison cell. Purpose-built castle dungeons were rare; many shown to tourists were storerooms or latrines, and the popular image owes much to Ivanhoe and Victorian tourism.
Dupont de Ligonnès murders and disappearance
Unsolved 2011 Nantes case: Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, 50, suspected of shooting his wife Agnès and four children plus two labradors and burying them under the family terrace; he disappeared at Roquebrune-sur-Argens on 15 April 2011 and remains France's most famous fugitive.
Duress in English law
Duress in English law is a common law excuse excusing crimes committed under threats of death or serious injury. Also called duress by threats and duress of circumstances; unavailable for murder, attempted murder and treason; refined by R v Hasan [2005].
Dustin Higgs
Dustin John Higgs, American federal death row inmate convicted of the 1996 kidnapping and murders of Tanji Jackson, Tamika Black, and Mishann Chinn in Maryland; received nine death sentences and was executed January 16, 2021, the last Trump-era federal execution.
Dusty Spencer
Dusty Ray Spencer, Florida death row inmate convicted of the 1992 murder of his wife Karen Spencer in Orange County; executed June 25, 2026 at age 74, the oldest person executed in modern Florida history.
Dutch Schultz
Dutch Schultz (Arthur Flegenheimer, 1902-1935) was a Bronx bootlegger and Harlem numbers-racket boss pursued for tax evasion by Thomas Dewey; he was shot dead at Newark's Palace Chop House on Luciano's orders.
DWI courts
A DWI court is a specialized problem-solving court for repeat and high-BAC impaired drivers, using treatment and intensive supervision instead of jail and adapted from the drug court model.
Dwight Eaglin
Dwight T. Eaglin, "Tommy" Eaglin, former professional boxer from Clearwater, Florida, twice sentenced to death for the 2003 murders of officer Darla Lathrem and inmate Charles Fuston during an escape attempt at Charlotte Correctional Institution.
Earle Nelson
Earle Leonard Nelson (Virgil Wilson), the "Gorilla Strangler" (1897/1898–1928), an American serial killer who murdered at least 22 women across North America in 1925–1927 and was hanged in Winnipeg after Canada's largest manhunt.
Earll family murders
The Earll family murders were the 1902 killings of six family members on a farm in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. Farmhand Albert Edwin Batson was convicted and hanged in 1903.
East Jersey State Prison
East Jersey State Prison (EJSP), formerly Rahway State Prison until its 1988 renaming, is a maximum-security New Jersey men's prison in Avenel, Woodbridge Township, opened in 1901, with an Auburn-style rotunda design and a proposed FY2026 closure.
Eastbound Strangler
Eastbound Strangler: unidentified American serial killer who murdered four Atlantic City sex workers, found November 20, 2006 in a drainage ditch behind the Golden Key Motel, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey; heads facing east, barefoot; case unsolved, Heuermann ruled out.