Lee Harvey Oswald's arrest for the death of President John F. Kennedy was widely broadcast on television. At 11 a.m. on Sunday, officials were preparing to transport Oswald by automobile from police headquarters to the neighboring county prison. Jacob Rubenstein, aka "Jack Ruby," then attacked Oswald in full view of witnesses and cameras.
The defendant, defended pro bono by renowned attorney Melvin Belli, requested that the trial be moved out of Dallas due to the high media attention. During the trial, defense lawyers tried to show that Ruby was legally insane and that he came from a family with a history of mental illness. However, Ruby was found guilty on March 14, 1964, and was sentenced to death.
In July 2020, federal officials in the United States charged Ghislaine Maxwell with the crimes of enticement and trafficking in connection with her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a financier and convicted offender.
In July of 2020, the FBI detained Maxwell in Bradford, New Hampshire, using an IMSI-catcher ("stingray") mobile phone tracking device on a phone that she used to call one of her lawyers, her spouse Scott Borgerson, and her sister Isabel. Her ties and dealings have not been made public despite the fact that she has been convicted.
Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter, was convicted of kidnapping and ending aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh's 20-month-old son. Although the evidence against Hauptmann appeared insurmountable, it has been maintained that the evidence was entirely circumstantial.
The case against Hauptmann later came under serious scrutiny - from those involved subsequently admitting they lied under oath to evidence being planted, witnesses being intimidated, Hauptmann being misidentified, and so much more. Jana Bommersbach, an investigative reporter, said that Hauptmann could not have received a fair trial because of the press prejudice against him due to his German ancestry.
Anna Sorokin is a Russian-born German. Sorokin claimed to be a wealthy German heiress named Anna Delvey between 2013 and 2017. In 2017, she was arrested in the United States for scamming or willfully manipulating large financial institutions, banks, hotels, and associates for a total of $275,000.
Sorokin was convicted of attempted grand larceny, larceny in the second degree, and theft of services in a New York state court in 2019 and sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison. Though she has been released from prison, Anna is presently being held in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, awaiting deportation.
Four states filed federal district court cases between January 2012 and February 2014, culminating in Obergefell v. Hodges. Following findings that gay marriage restrictions at the state level were unconstitutional that year by the Fourth, Seventh, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits - the Sixth Circuit held that it was bound by Baker v. Nelson.
This created a split between circuits and led to a Supreme Court review. Obergefell overturned Baker on June 26, 2015, and now compels all states to grant marriage licenses to gay couples and to recognize their weddings performed legally in other jurisdictions.
Derek Chauvin was one of four officers from the Minneapolis Police Department who arrested George Floyd on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill on May 25, 2020. Chauvin was charged in Floyd's death, with over 23 million people viewing the verdict on live television and online.
Chauvin was found guilty of unintentional second-degree homicide, third-degree homicide, and second-degree manslaughter. The trial court sentenced him to 22+12 years in jail for second-degree homicide
In August 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Illinois resident, shot two men in self-defense in Kenosha, Wisconsin. During a verbal altercation, Rittenhouse was chased into a parking lot by Joseph Rosenbaum. After attempting to disarm Rittenhouse by gripping the barrel of his rifle, Rosenbaum was shot four times at close range and died.
Rittenhouse took off running and was pursued by a crowd. He tripped, and at that moment Anthony Huber (26) approached and struck Kyle with his skateboard and was then fatally shot in the chest. Rittenhouse was cleared of all charges after asserting the affirmative defense of self-defense at trial.
This was a Supreme Court case involving one of former President Donald Trump's proclamations prohibiting people from several nations, as well as refugees without proper travel documents, from entering the US. Hawaii, along with a slew of other states and groups, challenged Trump's proclamation and two previous executive orders on statutory and constitutional grounds.
According to the court, the president's travel ban did not violate the Free Exercise Clause since his comments are reasonably understood to be justified by reasons other than unlawful grounds. National security was the independent justification in this case. This ruling reaffirmed the president's broad authority over immigration issues.
Casey Anthony was charged with the first degree in October 2008 in relation to her daughter's suspicious death and pleaded not guilty to the charges. The prosecution sought the death penalty. In the six-week trial, they alleged that Casey had killed her daughter with chloroform and taped over her nose and mouth to avoid parental responsibilities.
On July 5, 2011, the jury found Casey not guilty of the death, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated manslaughter of a child. Since the trial, many states have enacted "Caylee's Laws," which make it a felony for a parent or legal guardian to fail to report a missing kid if the parent knew or should have known the child was in danger.
Soon after their divorce from their two-year marriage, Heard wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post, accusing her ex-husband of crimes without naming him. Depp disputed the charges and blamed the article for ruining his reputation and career, as well as forcing him to lose a lot of money.
John C. Depp, II v. Amber Laura Heard was a defamation trial that began on April 11, 2022, and finished on June 1st of the same year in Fairfax County, Virginia. Plaintiff Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation on three counts, seeking $50 million in damages. From Heard, the jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. The punitive damages, however, were limited to $350,000 due to a Virginia state law.
In June of 1994, O.J. Simpson was charged with the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and Ron Goldman. The media covered every aspect of this case, from the vehicle chase to the documentary on his life.
Speculation was rife in bars, restaurants, barbershops, and local schools. The longer the case dragged on, the more fears of riots intensified. The pronouncement of the judgment was watched or heard by an estimated 100 million individuals throughout the world. On October 3rd, 1995, Simpson was acquitted of both counts after an eleven-month trial.
"Jane Roe" (Norma McCorvey) became pregnant with her third child and sought an abortion in Texas, where such procedures were illegal. She recruited two female lawyers who filed a lawsuit against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, in federal court in the United States on her behalf.
The Supreme Court ruled 7–2 in favor of "Jane Roe" on January 22, 1973, ruling that women in the United States have a basic right to choose whether or not to have abortions without unreasonable government restrictions and declaring Texas's abortion law unconstitutional. However, in June of 2022, the Supreme Court overruled Roe, stating that they should "return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives."
A plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951 after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied admission to Topeka's all-white elementary schools. Brown argued that segregation violated the 14th Amendment's "equal protection provision" because black children's schools were not equal to white children's schools in his case.
In a unanimous verdict against school segregation swayed by a newly appointed Supreme Court justice, they declared that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place, as segregated schools are inherently unequal.”
Executive Order 9066 was signed shortly after the United States entered World War II. The order authorized the military to transport roughly 120,000 persons of Japanese descent to detention facilities run by the government, where they were kept for nearly 14 weeks.
Fred Korematsu, a 23-year-old Japanese-American citizen, refused to leave his home and work. Korematsu was arrested by the FBI six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor for failing to report to a relocation center. Korematsu was tried in federal court in San Francisco, convicted of violating military orders, and sent to an assembly center. Naturally, he tried to overturn the decision. In a 6-3 judgment on December 18, 1944, a split Supreme Court concluded that the detention was a "military necessity" and not based on race.
Dred Scott petitioned for his freedom in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County in April of 1846 after being unsuccessful in his attempt to purchase his freedom. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in its judgment that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States of America and could not expect protection from the federal government or the courts.
It was thankfully repealed by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and declared all people born in the United States to be citizens.The Dred Scott decision enraged abolitionists, who saw it as a way for the Supreme Court to put an end to the debate concerning slavery in the territories.
During filming for the movie Rust in 2021, a cinematographer was killed after actor Alec Baldwin mistakenly fired a prop gun he believed to be unloaded. Baldwin (along with other crew members) was initially charged in the incident, despite the fact that Baldwin was not the crew member in charge of ensuring the safety of the prop.
In April of 2023, the charges against the actor were dropped. However, they were once again brought against him after prosecutors (inexplicably) brought the evidence before a grand jury in October of 2023, who (also inexplicably) indicted him of manslaughter.
