3,576 articles
Legal status of Salvia divinorum in the United States
Salvia divinorum legality in the US: not scheduled under the federal Controlled Substances Act, DEA lists it as a drug of concern; roughly 27-29 states ban it, others restrict sale to minors or allow non-consumption use.
Legality of cannabis
Legality of cannabis: the legal status of cannabis under the 1961 Single Convention and national laws, covering decriminalization, depenalization, and legalization models in Uruguay (2013), Canada (2018), US states, Malta, and Germany, with observed policy outcomes.
Legality of child pornography
Legality of child pornography, now often called child sexual abuse material (CSAM): criminalized in most jurisdictions under the 2000 UN Optional Protocol (178 parties) and national statutes in the US, UK, Canada, Germany and the EU, with current reforms on AI-generated and self-generated images.
Legality of incest
Legality of incest: whether criminal law bans sexual activity between relatives. Many systems criminalize even consensual adult incest; others, like New Jersey, do not. Covers 1908 England, Stuebing v. Germany, and prohibition rationales.
Legality of incest in the United States
Incest laws in the United States: every state bans incestuous marriage, nearly all criminalize incest between close relatives, with New Jersey and Rhode Island not prosecuting consensual adult incest and Ohio limiting its statute to parent-child relationships.
Legs Diamond
Jack "Legs" Diamond, Prohibition-era New York bootlegger and Hudson Valley gang boss, survived four shootings and two Troy trials before being murdered in Albany on December 18, 1931.
Leo Boatman
Leo Lancing Boatman (born 1986) is an American Florida death-row inmate convicted of four murders: the 2006 Ocala National Forest shooting of two college students, two prison killings, and the 2019 murder of inmate William Chapman with William Wells.
Leo Frank
Leo Frank (Leo Max Frank) was a Jewish-American superintendent for the National Pencil Company in Atlanta who was lynched in 1915 after being convicted of Mary Phagan's murder.
Leo Sharp
Leo Earl Sharp Sr., known as "Tata", was an American World War II veteran and daylily breeder who became a cocaine courier for the Sinaloa Cartel in his late eighties.
Leonard Lake
Leonard Lake (born 1946, died June 2, 1985) was an American serial killer who with Charles Ng ran the Wilseyville, California abduction-murder scheme, built a bunker for Operation Miranda, and died by cyanide in custody before trial.
Leonarda Cianciulli
Leonarda Cianciulli, the Soap-Maker of Correggio (la saponificatrice di Correggio), Italian killer convicted in 1946 of murdering three women in 1939-1940, boiling their remains with caustic soda; died 1970 in Pozzuoli.
Leongatha mushroom murders
Leongatha mushroom murders: July 2023 poisoning of three relatives of Erin Patterson by death cap mushrooms in beef Wellington at her Victorian home; convictions 2025, life sentence, appeals pending.
Leonid Nikolaev (Леонид Васильевич Николаев)
Leonid Nikolaev, also known as Leonid Vasilevich Nikolaev, was a Soviet Communist Party member who assassinated Sergei Kirov, the party chief of Leningrad, at the Smolny Institute on December 1, 1934.
Leopold and Loeb
Leopold and Loeb: Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb, wealthy University of Chicago students who kidnapped and murdered Bobby Franks in 1924 as a 'perfect crime,' spared the death penalty by Clarence Darrow.
Lèse-majesté
Lèse-majesté (crimen laesae majestatis) is the crime of attacking a sovereign's dignity, from Roman law to modern statutes; Thailand's Section 112 carries three to fifteen years, while most European laws are dormant or repealed.
Lesley Eugene Warren
Lesley Eugene Warren, "The Babyface Killer" (born 1967), American serial killer convicted of murdering three women in North and South Carolina, 1989–1990, confessed to a fourth, on North Carolina death row.
Leslie Arnold
Leslie Arnold, also known as William Leslie Arnold, was an American murderer who killed his parents in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1958. He escaped prison in 1967 and lived as John Vincent Damon.
Leslie Isben Rogge
Leslie Isben Rogge, also spelled Ibsen Rogge, is an American bank robber and FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive #430, first captured via the Internet after surrendering in Guatemala in May 1996.
Leslie Van Houten
Leslie Van Houten (born 1949, Altadena, California) is a former Manson Family member convicted in the 1969 LaBianca murders, sentenced to death then seven years to life, denied parole 20-plus times, and released July 11, 2023 after 53 years, the first Manson follower paroled.
Lester Street Massacre
The Lester Street Massacre, also called the Lester Street murders, was the March 2, 2008 killing of six people, including two children, at 722 Lester Street, Memphis, by Jessie Dotson, who received six death sentences.
Lethal injection
Lethal injection is an execution method using intravenous drugs, first used in Texas in 1982 and now the default method in nearly all US death penalty jurisdictions.
Levi Bellfield
Levi Bellfield, British serial killer and former nightclub bouncer, is serving whole-life tariffs for murdering Marsha McDonnell, Amélie Delagrange, and Milly Dowler, and attempted murder of Kate Sheedy; later prison confessions remain disputed.
Liberian forced labor scandal
The Liberian forced labor scandal was a 1929 to 1934 controversy in which an international commission found Liberian officials shipping forced laborers to Fernando Po.
Liborio Bellomo
Liborio Bellomo, born Liborio Salvatore Bellomo in 1957 and known as "Big Barney," is an American alleged mobster and reported boss of New York's Genovese crime family.
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment, or life without parole, is a criminal sentence keeping a convicted person in prison for life, increasingly used instead of the death penalty.
Life imprisonment in England and Wales
Life imprisonment in England and Wales: mandatory for murder, discretionary for other serious offences. Covers the tariff system, whole life orders, Parole Board release, the Vinter ECHR ruling, and population statistics.
Life imprisonment in Norway
Life imprisonment in Norway (livstidsstraff): a formal penalty from the 1842 Criminal Code, rarely used, abolished in 1981 and replaced by a 21-year maximum; forvaring, indefinite preventive detention extendable by five years, now serves as the informal life sentence.
Life imprisonment in the United States
Life imprisonment in the United States covers parole-eligible life terms, life without parole (LWOP), and virtual life sentences. 194,803 prisoners serve life terms; 56,245 serve LWOP, concentrated in Florida, California, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Michigan.
Lil Durk murder-for-hire trial
Federal trial of rapper Lil Durk (Durk Banks), charged in 2024 under 18 U.S.C. § 1958 with a murder-for-hire plot targeting Quando Rondo that killed Saviay'a Robinson; acquitted on all counts September 11, 2026; racketeering trial set for August 30, 2027.
Linda Carty
Linda Carty, British national born 1958 in Saint Kitts, on Texas death row since 2002 for the 2001 kidnapping-murder of neighbor Joana Rodriguez; case contested over defense counsel and consular notification.