3,576 articles
List of wrongful convictions in the United States
Wrongful convictions in the United States: documented exonerations, mostly via the National Registry of Exonerations (3,866 cases, 36,226 years lost since 1989), their causes, notable cases, racial disparities, and death-row exonerations.
List of youngest killers
Documented cases of the youngest killers, including the James Bulger and Shawn Seesahai murders in the UK and Nathaniel Abraham in the US, with the minimum ages of criminal responsibility that determine prosecution.
Lists of people executed in Texas
Lists of people executed in Texas record executions from George Brown's 1819 hanging to TDCJ's current death-row roster: 603 executions by October 2026, lethal injection since 1982, 600th in May 2026.
Lists of people executed in the United States
Lists of people executed in the United States: the Espy File (15,269 executions, 1608-2002), the DPIC Execution Database (post-1976), and BJS Capital Punishment statistics, covering federal and military executions separately.
Litigation involving Jeffrey Epstein
Litigation involving Jeffrey Epstein covers the 2008 Florida plea and non-prosecution agreement, Crime Victims' Rights Act suits, 2019 federal sex trafficking charges, the estate's compensation program paying about $121 million, and JPMorgan and Bank of America settlements.
Little Ease
Little Ease, a tiny confined space in the Tower of London traditionally described as a 1.2 m square windowless torture cell, linked to Edmund Campion and Guy Fawkes but likely a blocked passage.
Lizard Squad
Lizard Squad is a cybercriminal group behind the Christmas 2014 DDoS attacks on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live; it also ran the Lizard Stresser DDoS-for-hire tool ($6–$500 per attack) and saw several teenage members arrested in the UK, US, Netherlands, and Finland.
Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Andrew Borden, Fall River woman tried and acquitted (June 20, 1893) for the August 4, 1892 hatchet murders of father Andrew and stepmother Abby; case unsolved, no one else charged; famous for the '40 whacks' rhyme.
Lizzie Halliday
Lizzie Halliday (Eliza Margaret McNally, c1860-1918), Irish-born American serial killer of 1890s Sullivan County, New York; convicted 1894, first woman sentenced to New York's electric chair, sentence commuted for insanity, died at Matteawan.
Loaded sock
Loaded sock: an improvised weapon made by filling and knotting a sock with rocks, batteries, a padlock, or similar dense objects; treated in law as a dangerous weapon based on use. Distinct from the police less-lethal sock round and from socks used to conceal guns.
Locard's exchange principle
Locard's exchange principle, Edmond Locard's foundational forensic science maxim often paraphrased as 'every contact leaves a trace,' holds that contact between objects transfers material both ways, underpinning trace evidence, transfer and persistence research, and crime scene investigation.
Logan Act
Logan Act, 18 U.S.C. § 953, a 1799 U.S. federal law barring unauthorized private diplomacy with foreign governments in dispute with the United States; penalty up to three years, only two apparent prosecutions, no conviction.
Lois Riess
Lois Ann Riess (born 1962) is a Minnesota woman serving two life sentences without parole for the 2018 murders of her husband David Riess and Florida lookalike Pamela Hutchinson, captured in Texas after a month-long manhunt.
Loitering
Loitering is a US criminal offense: remaining in a place with no apparent lawful purpose, per state statutes like NY Penal Law §240.35 and Florida §856.021; courts strike vague versions (Papachristou, Morales), and enforcement falls heavily on unhoused people.
London Dungeon
The London Dungeon is a Merlin Entertainments walk-through theatrical attraction at County Hall, South Bank, London, founded in 1974 by Annabel Geddes as a Tooley Street wax museum and moved from London Bridge in 2013.
Long Bay Correctional Centre
Long Bay Correctional Centre, also called Long Bay jail, is a group of three correctional centers, including Long Bay Hospital, at Matraville in Sydney's eastern suburbs.
Looting
Looting, also called pillaging or war booty, is theft of goods during a disturbance such as war, riot, or natural disaster, when normal property enforcement breaks down.
Lorenzo Gilyard
Lorenzo Gilyard (born c. 1951), the Kansas City Strangler, an American serial killer who strangled 13 women and girls in Kansas City from 1977 to 1993, identified in 2004 by DNA from a 1987 blood sample and convicted in 2007 of six murders, serving six life terms without parole.
Lori Erica Ruff
Lori Erica Ruff, born Kimberly McLean, was an American woman who lived under a stolen child's identity and died by suicide in Longview, Texas, in 2010; DNA genealogy identified her in 2016.
Los Angeles crime family
Los Angeles crime family (Dragna family), the Southern California La Cosa Nostra organization led by Jack Dragna until 1957; weakened by informant Jimmy Fratianno and 1980s prosecutions, it remains California's last Mafia family.
Los Ántrax
Los Ántrax, armed enforcement and security group of Ismael El Mayo Zambada's faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, founded 2008 by Chino Antrax after the Beltrán Leyva split; its leaders were killed, imprisoned, or fugitive by 2024.
Los Pepes
Los Pepes, acronym of People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar, was a Colombian vigilante coalition formed in January 1993 to destroy Pablo Escobar, who was killed in December 1993.
Los Zetas
Los Zetas, Mexican criminal organization founded in the late 1990s by Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas from military deserters; split from the Gulf Cartel in 2010, notorious for the San Fernando and Allende massacres, fragmented after 2012 into the Northeast Cartel and Old School Zetas.
Louis D. Hastings
Louis D. Hastings (born 1944), McCarthy, Alaska massacre perpetrator; shot six residents dead and wounded two on March 1, 1983 as part of a plan to sabotage the Trans-Alaska pipeline; sentenced to 634 years.
Louise Woodward case
The Louise Woodward case was a 1997 Massachusetts trial involving a British au pair. The Supreme Judicial Court upheld the reduction of the murder conviction to involuntary manslaughter in 1998.
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) is the largest US maximum-security prison, an 18,000-acre former slave plantation opened in 1901 on a Mississippi River bend, known for convict leasing history, farm labor litigation, and its ICE detention contract.
Luca Brasi
Luca Brasi is a fictional enforcer in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather and the 1972 film, played by wrestler Lenny Montana. Don Corleone's most loyal hitman, he is garroted by Sollozzo and Bruno Tattaglia while spying, inspiring "sleeps with the fishes."
Lucchese crime family
Lucchese crime family, one of New York's Five Families of La Cosa Nostra, originally the Gagliano family; led by Tommy Lucchese from 1951, later Anthony Corallo; known for garment district, union, and airport rackets and ongoing RICO prosecutions.
Lucy Letby
Lucy Letby is a British former neonatal nurse serving 15 whole-life orders after being convicted of murdering seven babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.
Lueders Park Piru
Lueders Park Piru (LPP), also Lueders Park Hustlers, a Bloods-affiliated Piru street gang on the East Side of Compton, California, founded early 1970s, named for Lueders Park at 1500 E. Rosecrans Avenue.