Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: Where were the West Memphis Three tried and convicted?
West Memphis Three is three men who – while teenagers – were tried and convicted, in 1994, of the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas.
Twenty of those who attended the Apalachin meeting were charged with "Conspiring to obstruct justice by lying about the nature of the underworld meeting" and found guilty in January 1959. All were fined, up to $10,000 each, and given prison sentences ranging from three to five years. All the convictions were overturned on appeal the following year.
The Hostages Trial (or, officially, The United States of America v. Wilhelm List, et al.) was held from
8 July 1947 until 19 February 1948 and was the seventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S. military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The twelve U.S. trials are collectively known as the "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" or, more formally, as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).
In 2012, a couple of American elected officials and office-seekers have suggested that Singapore's success in combating drug abuse should be examined as a model for the United States. Michael Bloomberg, a former Mayor of New York City, said that the United States could learn a thing or two from nations like Singapore when it came to drug trafficking, noting that "executing a handful of people saves thousands and thousands of lives." The last execution in New York took place in 1963. Several courts have ruled that the death penalty violates the New York Constitution (see "People v. LaValle"). In 2007, the state of New York abolished the death penalty. 20 states, plus Washington D.C., have abolished the death penalty, with the most recent being Washington state in 2018. However, certain states, such as Texas, still have similar or even higher rates of execution than Singapore.
Between 1880 and 1891, the feud claimed more than a dozen members of the two families. On one occasion, the governors of West Virginia and Kentucky even threatened to have their militias invade each other's states. In response, Kentucky Governor S. B. Buckner sent his Adjutant General Sam Hill to Pike County to investigate the situation. More than a dozen people died and at least 10 people were wounded. A few days after the New Year's Massacre, a posse led by Pike county deputy sheriff Frank Philipps rode out to track down Devil Anse's group across the border into West Virginia. The posse's first victim was Jim Vance, who was killed in the woods after he refused to be arrested. Philipps then made other successive raids on Hatfield homes and supporters and captured three before cornering the rest in Grapevine Creek on 19 January. Unfortunately for Philipps, Devil Anse and other Hatfields were waiting for them with an armed group of their own. A battle ensued between the two parties, and the Hatfields were eventually apprehended. Two Hatfield supporters were killed, and a deputy, Bill Dempsey, was executed by Frank Philipps after they surrendered. Wall Hatfield and eight others were arrested and brought to Kentucky to stand trial for the murder of Alifair McCoy (sometimes spelled Allaphare, Randolph's young daughter), killed during the New Year's Massacre.
In 1930, the Oregon Supreme Court appointed Thompson to prosecute George W. Joseph in a disbarment case. This was an extremely high-profile case because Joseph became a candidate for governor just prior to the case going to trail. The trial began on April 15. Joseph won the Republican primary against four other candidates on May 16. On May 27, the Supreme Court announced Joseph's disbarment. Joseph decided to continue his campaign, but died of a heart attack a few weeks later. Thompson's highest profile case was probably the Bowles-Loucks murder case. In 1931, a young millionaire from Portland named Nelson C. Bowles and his secretary Irma Loucks were accused of murdering Bowles' wife, Leone. Thompson led the defense team. The theory he offered the jury was that Leone had committed suicide. The trial became even more sensational when a key prosecution witness was stabbed and beaten at her home during the course of the trial. The witness recovered, but her testimony was not as useful as the prosecution had hoped. In fact, Thompson used her testimony to back up several important defense points. At the close of the trial, the jury took just an hour to acquit both Bowles and Louck.
Under the Three Strikes Laws, there were more than 7,400 second and third-strike cases filed statewide at the end of August 1994.
Historically, more than 90% of the defendants would plea bargain for more lenient sentence or dismissal of other charges. However, knowing the consequence of having three strikes, in 1995 plea bargaining with guilty pleas dropped to a frequency of 14% of defendants with second-strike cases and 6% of defendants with third-strike cases. As a result of the significant decrease in plea bargaining, prosecutors and public defenders face a high volume of jury trials, which are more expensive and which slow other business in the courts.
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany.
The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, in 1945–46, at the Palace of Justice. The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 24 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany, though several key architects of the war (such as Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels) had committed suicide before the trials began.
The building was the location of the Nuremberg trials that were held from 1945 to 1949 for the main surviving German war criminals of World War II. The Palace of Justice was chosen as the site of the trials because it was almost undamaged, offered sufficient space and included a large prison complex. The choice of the city of Nuremberg was symbolic as the Nazis had held large Nuremberg Rallies in the city.
On December 19–21, 1863, a public trial was held for George Ives, the suspected murderer of a young Dutch immigrant Nicholas Tiebolt. Hundreds of miners from around the area attended the 3-day, outdoor trial. George Ives was prosecuted by Wilbur F. Sanders and Ives was convicted and hanged on December 21, 1863. Sanders played a prominent role in Montana history and eventually became the first U.S. Senator from Montana when the territory gained statehood in 1889. While the Ives trial resulted in an execution many residents were frustrated by a cumbersome process that could easily be manipulated. This sentiment is illustrated by a quote from Thomas Dimsdale who wrote the first published account of the Montana Vigilantes, originally written in 1865 as a series of articles for the "Montana Post" and later compiled into a book.
Further trials at Nuremberg took place between 1946 and 1949, which tried a further 185 defendants. West Germany initially tried few ex-Nazis, but after the 1958 "Einsatzgruppen" trial, the government set up a governmental agency to investigate crimes. Other trials of Nazis and collaborators took place in Western and Eastern Europe414-428}} In 1960, Israeli Mossad agents kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. The trial ended in his conviction in December 1961, and his execution in May 1962. Eichmann's trial and death revived interest in war criminals and the Holocaust in general.
In 1957, Magliocco was arrested with 60 other mobsters who were attending the Apalachin Conference, a national mob meeting in Apalachin, New York. On January 13, 1960, Magliocco and 21 others were convicted of conspiracy and he was sentenced to five years in prison. However, on November 28, 1960, a United States Court of Appeals overturned the verdicts.
Although it had been initially planned to hold more than just one international trial at the IMT, the growing differences between the victors of the second world war (the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Soviet Union) made this impossible. However, the Control Council Law No. 10, which the Allied Control Council had issued on 20 December 1945, empowered any of the occupying authorities to try suspected war criminals in their respective occupation zones. Based on this law, the U.S. authorities proceeded after the end of the initial Nuremberg Trial against the major war criminals to hold another twelve trials in Nuremberg. The judges in all these trials were American, and so were the prosecutors; the Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Brigadier General Telford Taylor. In the other occupation zones similar trials took place.
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision regarding the case called "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas", in which the plaintiffs charged that the education of black children in separate public schools from their white counterparts was unconstitutional. "Brown v. Board of Education" meant that the University of Alabama had to be desegregated. In the years following, hundreds of African-Americans applied for admission, but with one brief exception, all were denied. The University worked with police to find any disqualifying qualities, or when this failed, intimidated the applicants. But in 1963, three African-Americans —Vivian Malone Jones, Dave McGlathery and James Hood—applied. In early June a federal district judge ordered that they be admitted, and forbade Governor Wallace from interfering.
Jack Thompson, the Florida lawyer noted for his activism against video games, rap music, and Howard Stern was permanently disbarred for various charges of misconduct. The action was the result of several grievances claiming that Thompson had made defamatory, false statements and attempted to humiliate, embarrass, harass or intimidate his opponents. The order was made on September 25, 2008, effective October 25. However, Thompson attempted to appeal to the higher courts in order to avoid the penalty actually taking effect. Neither the US District court, nor the US Supreme Court would hear his appeal, rendering the judgment of the Florida Supreme Court final.
People v. LaValle, 3 N.Y.3d 88 (2004), was a landmark decision by the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the U.S. state of New York, in which the court ruled that the state's death penalty statute was unconstitutional because of the statute's direction on how the jury was to be instructed in case of deadlock. New York has since been without the death penalty, as the law has not been amended.
The Nuremberg Doctors' Trial took place from December 9, 1946 to August 20, 1947 at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice before an American military court. Its primary purpose was to prosecute Nazi doctors for their involvement in torturous medical experiments performed in German concentration camps during the war; prosecuting those who had participated in the euthanasia programme was of secondary importance to the Americans. Thus, only four of the twenty-three defendants were charged with murdering the mentally ill as part of the euthanasia programme: Karl Brandt, Viktor Brack, Waldemar Hoven, and Kurt Blome. All of them except for Blome were convicted and executed.
Within weeks of the killing, the RUC had arrested ten women and one man in connection with the murder; this group contained Douglas' entire "Heavy Squad". Most of the women were unemployed and at least three had male relatives imprisoned for paramilitary offences. On 6 February 1975 at the Belfast City Commission, teenagers Henrietta Cowan and Christine Smith pleaded guilty to murder. They were now aged 18 and 17 respectively. Characterised as having been "without feeling or remorse", they were convicted of carrying out the murder and sentenced to be detained at Armagh Women's Prison for life at the pleasure of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Smith was not the only member of her family to be involved in loyalist paramilitary activity. Her elder brother, prominent South Belfast UDA member Francis "Hatchet" Smith (28), was shot dead in Rodney Parade, off Donegall Road, by the IRA in January 1973 after he, as part of a UDA unit, gunned down Peter Watterson, a 15-year-old Catholic boy, in a drive-by sectarian shooting at the Falls Road/Donegall Road junction. A roofer by trade who was married with one child he was (despite his wife having been Catholic), the local UDA commander in the Village area where he lived.
The record shows that during his service, on September 27, 1857 he deserted from Fort Randall, South Dakota. He was arrested 3 days later in Sioux City, Iowa having made his way 120 miles down the Missouri River. He was court martialed and sentenced to 6 months of hard labor with a ball and chain and fined $10 plus an additional fine to cover the cost of his recapture. During the trial he declined to testify in his own defense. Fortunately for Augustus, his commanding officer, Captain William M. Gardner, testified on his behalf and prevailed on the court to suspend the harsher penalties. Augustus was only required to make up the 3 days of lost service and pay $30 to cover the cost of his apprehension. The episode is not disclosed in his book. Augustus did however express his gratitude toward the Captain.
Capital punishment was reintroduced in 1995 under the Pataki administration, but the statute was declared unconstitutional in 2004, when the New York Court of Appeals ruled in "People v. LaValle" that it violated the state constitution. The remaining death sentence was commuted by the court to life imprisonment in 2007, in "People v. John Taylor", and the death row was disestablished in 2008, under executive order from Governor Paterson. No execution has taken place in New York since 1963. Legislative efforts to amend the statute have failed, and death sentences are no longer sought at the state level, though certain crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government are subject to the federal death penalty.
The prosecution theorized that McMonigle abducted Chamberlain with the intention of raping her, murdered her when she tried to resist, and later carried her body to the Devil's Slide and tossed it into the ocean. He was pronounced guilty by the jury after only 38 minutes of deliberation, and sentenced to die in the gas chamber. While in death row, he confessed to the murder of a San Francisco woman and later to have murdered eleven people overall, but he was not charged with more murders. In his last statement before his execution in 1948, however, McMonigle claimed that he was not involved in Chamberlain's disappearance.
Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three is a 2002 true crime book by Mara Leveritt, about the 1993 murders of three eight-year-old children and the subsequent trials of three teenagers charged with and convicted of the crimes. The names of the three teens convicted - Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley - would come to be known as the West Memphis Three. Leveritt's book revolves around the central idea that the three teenagers' convictions stemmed from "Satanic panic" rather than actual evidence. The book also focuses on one of the victim's stepfathers and his possible connection with the murders. All three teenagers convicted were released on August 19, 2011. A film based on the book, "Devil's Knot", was released in 2013.
Author Mara Leveritt makes numerous comparisons of the Memphis Three trials to the Salem Witch Trials, stating that the three Memphis defendants were convicted based on the "Satanic Craze" the community was surrounded by after the murders. Actual evidence used by the prosecution during the trials included pictures of Metallica T-shirts worn by Jason Baldwin and books checked out by Damien Echols at his public library; the prosecutions' cases offered little more than circumstantial evidence. Eventually, all three defendants were convicted of the murders, with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley receiving life sentences without parole, and Damien Echols receiving the death penalty.Atom Egoyan directed the 2013 film adaptation, starring Colin Firth as Ron Lax and Reese Witherspoon as Pamela Hobbs, mother of Steven Branch.
Berg has directed the 10-minute-long documentary film "Polarized" (2007) for Al Gore's Live Earth Pledge. She also produced "Bhutto", a documentary feature that played at Sundance 2010. "West of Memphis" (2012), produced by Peter Jackson and Damien Echols, documents the story of the West Memphis Three, who were convicted as teenagers of the 1993 murder of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. The film has received critical acclaim and won numerous awards at film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival, where the film premiered in January 2012, and the Toronto International Film Festival.
The 1993 murders of three young boys and the subsequent convictions of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. brought a lot of unwanted attention to West Memphis. The three young men convicted were known as the West Memphis Three and brought about a great amount of public intrigue. Three documentaries have been made about the incident, the first being "". Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley were released from jail in 2011 after signing an Alford plea which allowed them to plea guilty while maintaining their innocence. They were released with time served and placed on probation until 2021.