Word: rappings
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...deciding constitutional questions commonly means weighing competing values. The balance is often delicate, as the California Supreme Court has just shown in answering yes to a weird question: Can a man beat a narcotics rap by pinning...
...case until one-third of a convict's term had elapsed. Bennett inspired the 1958 Omnibus Sentencing Act, which allows far greater parole flexibility and permits a judge to jail a man for three to six months of observation before final sentencing, thus encouraging courts to tailor the rap to the man. As a result of Bennett's pioneering, only 10% of federal prisoners serve more than five years. And the prison population is declining: there are 1,359 fewer cons this year than...
Nothing has so baffled judges through the ages as how to handle children accused of crime. English common law absolved those under seven but often gave older children the same rap as adults. One eight-year-old was thus hanged for burning a barn, reports Blackstone's Commentaries; a 13-year-old servant girl was burned for killing her mistress. Such shockers moved Illinois in 1899 to establish the first U.S. juvenile court, on the humane theory that government must "protect" children whose parents fail them, rehabilitating rather than punishing...
Alfie sued Sparks for libel-in effect demanding that Sparks prove that the original conviction was correct. Sparks tried, but a London jury was unconvinced. It found in Alfie's favor-thus casting Alfie's robbery rap in doubt. "Now," he says happily, "I shall press for my conviction to be quashed...
...Angeles-tried to gain possession of a war-surplus airplane that they claimed they had bought. Although a federal court had enjoined them from owning the plane, the Finns arrested a U.S. district attorney for "violating" their constitutional rights. Result: the Finns got a one-year rap for assaulting a federal officer and were blasted by a U.S. appellate court for having "taken the law into their own hands." Now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court is the case of Dr. Harvey K. Jackson, a Texan who in 1963 was informed by two Internal Revenue agents that his property...