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A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". [1] Convicts are often also known as " prisoners " or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", [ 2 ] while a common label for former convicts, especially those recently released from prison, is " ex-con " (" ex-convict ").
In law, a conviction is the determination by a court of law that a defendant is guilty of a crime. [1] A conviction may follow a guilty plea that is accepted by the court, a jury trial in which a verdict of guilty is delivered, or a trial by judge in which the defendant is found guilty. The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal (that is ...
Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a jury must vote unanimously to convict in any criminal offense that requires a jury trial. Some jurisdictions permit the court to give the jury a so-called Allen charge , inviting the dissenting jurors to re-examine their opinions, as a last-ditch effort to prevent the jury from hanging.
The rarely granted intervention permits the judge to exercise discretion to avoid extreme and unreasonable jury decisions. In civil cases in U.S. federal court, the term was replaced in 1991 by the renewed judgment as a matter of law, which emphasizes its relationship to the judgment as a matter of law, formerly called a directed verdict. [1]
In most common law jurisdictions, an element of a crime is one of a set of facts that must all be proven to convict a defendant of a crime. Before a court finds a defendant guilty of a criminal offense, the prosecution must present evidence that, even when opposed by any evidence the defense may choose, is credible and sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed ...
In May 2011, a U.S. Supreme Court upheld a decision against the state of California that required reducing the prison population to avoid overcrowding. A federal three-judge panel had ordered ...
Trial penalties, they point out, impose such harsh sanctions on choosing to go to trial—with prosecutors sometimes threatening multi-decade prison sentences if a plea deal of only a few years is not accepted—that trial penalties amount to coercing defendants to plead guilty. This coercion, they argue, renders plea bargains unconstitutional.
Former President Donald Trump said Monday that one of his first acts as president if he wins in November would be to "free" those charged and convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack on ...