University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Hitler ("Beer Hall Putsch") Trial
The Adolf Hitler ("Beer Hall Putsch") Trial (1924)
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Famous Trials: Chamberlain "Dingo" Trial (1982)
"The scientist shouldn't become too adventurous, too competitive. The trouble is, we're all so human. I've never seen a case more governed by human frailties." --Dr. Tony Jones, government pathologist in the Chamberlain trial.
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Carthage (Joseph Smith Murder) Trial (1845)
One of the most consequential crimes in American history occurred on a summer day in 1844 when a mob stormed a jail in Carthage, Illinois and murdered Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum. The killing of Joseph Smith, the charismatic...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Bernhard Goetz Trial (1987)
The Saturday afternoon before Christmas in 1984, on a New York City subway car making its run downtown, two black teenagers approached Bernhard Goetz. One of the teens said to the slightly built blond man, "Give me five dollars." Seconds...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Brown v Topeka Board of Ed. (1951)
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is widely known as the Supreme Court decision that declared segregated schools to be "inherently unequal." The story behind the case, including that of the 1951 trial in a Kansas courtroom, is much...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Anders Breivik (Norway Massacre) Trial
Anders Breivik (Norway Massacre) Trial (2012)is discussed and analyzed on this module.
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Dan White Trial (1979)
Dan White wanted his job back. Days after resigning his position as one of San Francisco's eleven supervisors, he had second thoughts, and asked Mayor George Moscone to reappoint him. When he learned the Mayor would not honor his...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: D. C. Stephenson Trial (1925)
In 1925, the Indiana KKK was the largest state branch in the Klan's "Invisible Empire." The conviction in November of that year of D. C. Stephenson, the powerful grand dragon of the Indiana Klan, for the murder of Madge Oberholtzer led...
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Famous Trials: Confidential Magazine Trial (1957)
Thomas Wolfe called Confidential (1952-58) "the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world." Confidential went where no publication had gone before in exposing to the public the private lives of celebrities. Truth,...
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Famous Trials: Famous Medieval Trials (897 1386)
The year is 897, and Pope Stephen VI has ordered the eight-month-old corpse of his predecessor removed from its vault at St. Peter's. The former, and very dead, pope is clad in his old pontifical vestments, placed on a throne in a Roman...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Mc Martin Preschool Abuse Trial (1987 90)
"They're putting on witnesses who they know are lying. They concealed exonerating evidence. Don't we have enough criminal conduct by the prosecutors to put them behind bars?" "It doesn't work that way," the lawyer laughed. "The law is...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: The Trials of Mary Dyer (1659 & 1660)
Mary Dyer was on a spiritual quest to Boston, to Portsmouth, to Newport, and to the northwest coast of England, where she became an ardent member of a new religion - a Quaker, or a member of the Society of Friends. Determined to spread...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Falwell v Flynt Trial (1984)
Asked about his first sexual experience by an interviewer, Reverend Jerry Falwell said, "I never really expected to make it with Mom, but then after she showed all the other guys in town such a good time, I thought 'What the hell!'"...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Enron (Lay & Skilling) Trial (2006)
In 2000, Enron was the darling of Wall Street, the largest seller of natural gas in North America, the fifth largest corporation in the United States, and the nation's "most innovative" large company (according to Fortune magazine). By...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: The Dreyfus Affair Trials
This article details The Court Marial of Alfred Dreyfus. The document pieced together that September day in Paris, called "the bordereau," would launch a criminal process that would divide and convulse France for decades. The events set...
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Famous Trials: U. S. V Korematsu (Japanese American Exclusion Case)
This article explains the United States v Korematsu (The Japanese-American Exclusion Case)during WWW II Japanese-Americans were subject to relocation camps. It also includes a video with Korematsu.
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Trials of Giordano Bruno (1592 1600)
In the early morning light of Ash Wednesday, the primary day in the Church calendar for Christian penance, Giordano Bruno, one of the most original minds of the sixteenth century, rode into Rome's Campo de' Fiori on a mule. Stripped...
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Famous Trials: George Zimmerman ("Trayvon Martin") Trial (2013)
Trayvon Martin was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Walking back from a 7-Eleven to the Sanford, Florida townhouse of his father's fiancee on a dark and rainy February evening in 2012, Martin aroused the suspicions of neighborhood...
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Famous Trials: The Trial of Gaius Verres: An Account (79 Bc)
The records of the trial of Gaius (sometimes spelled Caius) Verres reveal--far better than any other extant source--the corruption of the last years of the Roman Republic. Through a series of orations and witnesses, Verres's prosecutor,...
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Famous Trials: Molly Maguires Trials (1876 77)
In 1875, a writer of the time observed, there came from coal-mining district of Pennsylvania "an appalling series of tales of murder, of arson, and of every description of violent crime." Mine company superintendents and bosses "could...
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Famous Trials: Lizzie Borden Trial (1893)
"Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother forty whacks, When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one." Actually,the Bordens received only 29 whacks, not the 81 suggested by the famous ditty, but the popularity of...
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Famous Trials: Lenny Bruce Trial (1964)
"What does it mean to be found obscene in New York? This is the most sophisticated city in the country....If anyone is the first person to be found obscene in New York, he must feel utterly depraved." --Lenny Bruce, after his conviction...
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Famous Trials: Matthew Shepard Murder (Mc Kinney and Henderson) Trials (1999)
This article focuses on the murder of Matthew Shepard. Matthew Shepard was gay. Tied to the fence as we was, the sheriff allowed that it did look a bit like a crucifixion. With little more than that, a consensus quickly emerged that...
University of Missouri
Famous Trials: Lapd (King Beating) Trials (1992 1993)
It seemed like an open-and-shut case. The George Holliday video, played on television so often that an executive at CNN called it "wallpaper," showed three Los Angeles police officers--as their supervisor watched-- kicking, stomping on,...