3,576 articles
Public executions in Iran
Public executions in Iran (اعدام در ملاء عام) are state hangings at dawn in public squares, often from truck-mounted cranes. Discretionary rather than legally required, they numbered 59 in 2013, 4 in 2024, and at least 10 in 2025.
Public humiliation
Public humiliation: deliberate exposure of a person to scorn before witnesses, historically as judicial punishment (stocks, pillory, rege ribaldum, walk of shame) and today studied for mental health effects.
Public intoxication
Public intoxication: an offense covering intoxication in a public place, also called public drunkenness or drunk and disorderly. Varies from criminal misdemeanor in Texas and Pennsylvania to abolition under the Uniform Alcoholism Act and health-led reform in Victoria, Australia.
Public Morals (2015 TV series)
Public Morals is a 2015 American period police drama created by Edward Burns for TNT, set in early 1960s New York City, canceled after one season.
Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland v. Liam Adams
PPS NI v. Liam Adams (R v Liam Dominic Adams [2015] NICA 24): prosecution of Gerry Adams' brother for raping and abusing his daughter Áine, 1977-1983; 2013 conviction on ten counts, 16-year sentence, appeal dismissed 2015.
Pump and dump
Pump and dump, also called ramp and dump, is securities fraud in which promoters inflate an asset's price with false statements, then sell into the inflated market; it targets microcap stocks and cryptocurrencies and is banned under US, UK, and EU market-abuse rules.
Punishment
Punishment is the legal imposition of penalties such as imprisonment, fines, and probation for criminal offenses. Also called criminal sanctions, it serves deterrence, retribution, incapacitation, restitution, and rehabilitation; meta-analyses find imprisonment does not reduce reoffending versus noncustodial sanctions.
Punishment in Australia
Punishment in Australia covers sentencing and sanctions across nine jurisdictions: imprisonment (228 per 100,000 adults, 2026), community corrections orders (371 per 100,000), jurisdictional variation, Indigenous over-representation, and penal reform debates.
Putney Pusher
The Putney Pusher is an unidentified jogger who pushed a woman into the path of a bus on Putney Bridge, London, in May 2017; the case remains unsolved.
Pyramid scheme
Pyramid scheme: illegal business model where returns come mainly from recruiting new paying participants rather than product sales; contrasts with Ponzi schemes and legitimate multi-level marketing; mathematically certain to collapse.
Qian Zhimin (criminal)
Qian Zhimin (钱志敏), alias Yadi Zhang, Chinese fraudster born 1978 who ran the Lantian Gerui Ponzi scheme (2014-2017, 128,000 victims), fled to the UK, and was jailed 11 years 8 months in 2025 over the UK's largest bitcoin seizure.
R v Brown
R v Brown [1993] UKHL 19, [1994] 1 AC 212: House of Lords case holding that consent is no defence to actual bodily harm or wounding inflicted in consensual sadomasochistic activity, distinguished in R v Wilson and restated by section 71 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
R v Dudley and Stephens
R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273, also called Regina v Dudley and Stephens, an English Queen's Bench Division case from the Mignonette shipwreck, held that necessity is not a defence to murder; convicted sailors' death sentences were commuted to six months.
R v Hasan
R v Hasan [2005] UKHL 22 (also R v Z) is a House of Lords case and the leading English authority on duress: duress fails where the defendant voluntarily associated with criminals and foresaw violent compulsion; exculpatory statements are not PACE confessions.
R v Ruzic
R v Ruzic, 2001 SCC 24, is a Supreme Court of Canada case in which Marijana Ruzic's acquittal for importing heroin was upheld and the immediacy and presence requirements of the Criminal Code duress defence, s. 17, were struck down under Charter s. 7.
R. Kelly sexual abuse cases
R. Kelly sexual abuse cases: criminal prosecutions of singer Robert Sylvester Kelly. Acquitted in a 2008 Chicago child porn trial; convicted in Brooklyn 2021 on racketeering and Mann Act counts (30 years) and in Chicago 2022 on child pornography counts (20 years); appeals upheld 2024-2025.
Race and crime in the United Kingdom
Race and crime in the United Kingdom covers ethnic differences in victimisation, arrests, stop and search, sentencing, and imprisonment in England and Wales, drawing on Ministry of Justice statistics, the Macpherson Report, and the Lammy Review.
Race and crime in the United States
Race and crime in the United States: study of racial and ethnic differences in offending, victimization, and justice outcomes, dominated by measurement problems such as race misclassification, voluntary NIBRS reporting, and contested disparity research.
Rachel Wade
Rachel Wade, Largo, Florida woman convicted of second-degree murder for fatally stabbing 18-year-old Sarah Ludemann in Pinellas Park on April 15, 2009, after a feud over Joshua Camacho; sentenced to 27 years.
Racial profiling
Racial profiling: police use of race or ethnicity in stop, search, and investigation decisions; also called biased policing. Covers benchmarking, veil-of-darkness and outcome tests, Whren and Scheindlin rulings, and 95-million-stop disparity studies.
Rack (torture)
The rack, also known as the torture rack, is a wooden frame with rollers that stretched victims apart, and the best-known instrument of judicial torture in Europe.
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (18 U.S.C. §§1961–1968), a 1970 federal statute targeting organized crime through enterprise-and-pattern racketeering charges, 20-year-per-count penalties, and civil treble damages.
Racketeering
Racketeering, defined in US law by the 1970 RICO Act (18 U.S.C. 1961-1968), is conducting an enterprise through a pattern of at least two related predicate crimes such as mail or wire fraud, carrying 20-year-per-count penalties, forfeiture, and civil treble damages.
Rafael Caro Quintero
Rafael Caro Quintero, "Narco of Narcos" (born 1952), Mexican drug trafficker who co-founded the Guadalajara Cartel, ordered the 1985 kidnapping and murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, served 40 years until a 2013 release, was recaptured in Sinaloa in 2022, and was expelled to US prosecution in Brooklyn in 2025.
Raghunandan Yandamuri
Raghunandan Yandamuri, Andhra Pradesh-born software engineer on an H-1B visa, kidnapped and killed baby Saanvi Venna and grandmother Satyavathi Venna in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania in 2012 for ransom to cover gambling debts; first Indian-American sentenced to death in the US.
Rainey Bethea
Rainey Bethea (c. 1909 – 1936), Black man hanged August 14, 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky for the rape of Lischia Edwards; widely recognized as the last public execution in the United States, before roughly 10,000 to 20,000 spectators.
Ralph Capone
Ralph "Bottles" Capone (Raffaele James Capone, 1894–1974), older brother of Al Capone, ran the Chicago Outfit's bottling operations, was Public Enemy No. 3, was convicted in 1931, and later lived in Mercer, Wisconsin.
Ralph Menzies
Ralph Leroy Menzies, Utah death row prisoner convicted in 1988 of the 1986 murder of Maurine Hunsaker, elected firing squad execution; dementia competency litigation stayed his 2025 execution, and he died of natural causes in November 2025.
Raman Raghav
Raman Raghav (1929–1995), aka Sindhi Talwai or 'Psycho Raman', was an Indian serial killer who bludgeoned homeless victims in 1960s Bombay; arrested 1968, diagnosed schizophrenic, death sentence commuted to life in 1987.
Rambo Bentong murders
Rambo Bentong murders: killings and rapes in Bentong, Pahang, by Rabidin Satir, who murdered Annie Kok Yin Cheng (2009) and Khairul Hazree Jamaludin (2012) and remains on death row after a 2024 review.