3,576 articles
Reasonable doubt
Reasonable doubt: the criminal standard of proof requiring prosecution evidence to leave the fact-finder firmly convinced of guilt. Formulated by 1798, constitutionally required in the U.S. by In re Winship (1970), with disputed theological origins.
Reasonable suspicion
Reasonable suspicion is the Fourth Amendment standard from Terry v. Ohio allowing brief stops and frisks on articulable facts, below probable cause, applied through totality of the circumstances in cases like Wardlow, Glover, and recent immigration rulings.
Rebecca Nurse
Rebecca Nurse (1621–1692), Rebecca Towne Nurse, a respected 71-year-old Salem Village farm wife and sister of Mary Easty and Sarah Cloyce, hanged for witchcraft on July 19, 1692 after a reversed not-guilty verdict, exonerated in 1711, with her Danvers, Massachusetts homestead preserved as a museum.
Recidivism
Recidivism, also called reoffending or repeat offense, is when a person previously involved in the criminal justice system offends again, measured by new arrests, convictions, or imprisonment.
Recklessness (law)
Recklessness (law): a fault standard of consciously disregarding a substantial, unjustifiable risk, sitting between knowledge and negligence in the Model Penal Code hierarchy; in England and Wales defined subjectively since R v G (2003), and in tort an interstitial standard marking the boundary of malice.
Reckoning (TV series)
Reckoning (2019-2020) is a 10-episode Australian psychological thriller by David Hubbard and David Eick for Playmaker/Sony Pictures Television, starring Aden Young and Sam Trammell, set in California, released on Netflix May 1, 2020; ended after one season.
Recognizance
Recognizance: a recorded court obligation in Anglo-American law binding a person (recognizor) to perform an act, usually to appear in court, on pain of a money forfeiture; basis of bail and release on one's own recognizance.
Recy Taylor
Recy Taylor (1919–2017), born Recy Corbitt, was an Alabama sharecropper gang-raped by white men in September 1944; Rosa Parks investigated for the NAACP, two grand juries refused to indict, and Alabama apologized in 2011.
Red Onion State Prison
Red Onion State Prison: level V/VI supermax prison in Pound, Wise County, Virginia, opened 1998 under Governor Allen as a 1,200-bed twin of Wallens Ridge; subject of solitary-confinement litigation and 2023 restorative housing law.
Red-light district
Red-light district: an urban area where prostitution and sex-related businesses are concentrated and visible, formal tolerance zones or informal clusters; examples include Amsterdam's De Wallen, Soho, and Leeds' managed zone.
Reeva Steenkamp
Reeva Rebecca Steenkamp (1987-2013), South African model, law graduate, and reality TV star killed by Oscar Pistorius on 14 February 2013; Pistorius was convicted of murder and paroled in January 2024.
Reform school
Reform school, also called training school or juvenile reformatory, a residential institution for court-committed youth; rooted in 1825 houses of refuge and parens patriae, largely replaced by juvenile courts, community programs, and secure children's homes.
Rehabilitation (penology)
Rehabilitation (penology): treatment, education, and behavioral programs in corrections aimed at reducing recidivism. Key framework is Risk-Need-Responsivity; meta-analyses find positive treatment effects versus punitive sanctions.
Reid technique
Reid technique: American accusatorial interrogation method by John E. Reid and Fred E. Inbau, three stages and nine steps, contrasted with the PEACE model and criticized for false confession risk.
René Belbenoît
René Belbenoît (1899–1959), French convict and author of Dry Guillotine (1938), escaped French Guiana's penal colony in 1935 after four prison breaks and reached Los Angeles, later advising Warner Bros.
Reno U-Haul murders
Reno U-Haul murders: January 3, 1994 robbery-murders of U-Haul employees Peggy Crawford and Keith Christopher in Reno, Nevada, by Alvaro Calambro and Duc Cong Huynh; $2,400 stolen; Calambro executed 1999.
Restorative justice
Restorative justice: processes in which consenting victims, offenders, and affected communities resolve matters arising from crime with a trained facilitator. Forms include victim-offender mediation, conferencing, and circles; trial evidence shows modest recidivism reduction and higher victim satisfaction.
Retributive justice
Retributive justice, or retributivism, is a punishment theory holding that wrongdoers deserve proportionate punishment and that inflicting it is intrinsically good; associated with Kant and Hegel, distinguished from revenge, and opposed to consequentialist deterrence theories.
Rettendon murders
Rettendon murders (Essex Boys, Range Rover murders): Tucker, Tate and Rolfe shot dead in a Range Rover at Rettendon, Essex, 6 December 1995; Steele and Whomes convicted in 1998 on supergrass Nicholls's evidence, still disputed.
Revenge porn
Revenge porn, also called non-consensual pornography or NCII, is the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, part of image-based sexual abuse; distinguished by motive from general NCII and now criminalized by the US Take It Down Act and UK Online Safety Act.
Revised Penal Code
Revised Penal Code (Act No. 3815), the general penal statute of the Philippines, enacted December 8, 1930, effective January 1, 1932; two Books, 20 Titles, 367 Sections; suppletory to special penal laws under Article 10.
Reynhard Sinaga
Reynhard Sinaga, Indonesian serial rapist and Britain's most prolific convicted rapist, drugged and raped men in Manchester 2015-2017; life sentence, 40-year minimum since 2020 appeal.
Ricardo López (stalker)
Ricardo López, the Björk stalker, Uruguayan-born pest control worker born 1975 in Montevideo; mailed a sulfuric acid letter bomb to Björk's London home in September 1996, filmed a 22-hour video diary, and died by suicide on camera; the bomb was intercepted.
Rich Porter
Rich Porter, born 1965, was a Harlem crack dealer of the 1980s, known as 'Money Rich'; murdered January 3, 1990 while negotiating his kidnapped brother's ransom; basis for Mitch in Paid in Full.
Richard Allen Davis
Richard Allen Davis (born 1954), California career criminal who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma in 1993; convicted 1996, sentenced to death; case spurred California's three-strikes law.
Richard Beasley (serial killer)
Richard James Beasley, the Ohio "Craigslist Killer," lured unemployed men with a fake $300-a-week farmhand job ad in 2011 and, with teen accomplice Brogan Rafferty, killed three men and wounded one; he received three death sentences in 2013.
Richard Chase
Richard Trenton Chase, the "Vampire of Sacramento" or "Dracula Killer," murdered six people in Sacramento, California, December 1977 to January 1978, drank victims' blood, was found sane at trial, sentenced to death, and died by suicide at San Quentin in 1980.
Richard Cottingham
Richard F. Cottingham, the 'Torso Killer' or 'Times Square Killer' (born 1946), an American serial killer active in New York and New Jersey from the 1960s to 1980; convicted of 11 homicides, later confessed to many more, claiming up to 100 victims.
Richard Evonitz
Richard Marc Evonitz (1963–2002) was an American serial killer who murdered three girls in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, in 1996–1997; identified in 2002 after Kara Robinson escaped his South Carolina abduction, he died by suicide and was never tried.
Richard Glossip
Richard Glossip, Oklahoma death row prisoner twice convicted of arranging the 1997 murder-for-hire killing of motel owner Barry Van Treese on Justin Sneed's testimony; conviction overturned by the Supreme Court in Glossip v. Oklahoma (2025), released on bail May 2026, retrial pending.