You might think attractive people get preferential treatment in life—and research suggests you'd be right. Some psychologists have shown this can even help people get a lighter prison sentence. More recently, however, our ...
Feb 1, 2024
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Researchers have found that defendants who don't "swear by Almighty God" when in court run a higher risk of being found guilty by jurors who themselves swear by God.
Apr 4, 2023
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The criminal justice system (CJS) is failing autistic people, argue researchers at the Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge, after a survey of lawyers found that an overwhelming majority of their clients were not ...
Mar 15, 2022
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Sophisticated brain imaging, like an MRI, has limited applicability in assessing a defendant's sanity, investigators say.
Jan 31, 2020
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A New York judge on Wednesday scheduled what could be the second state-level trial in the U.S. on the toll of opioids.
Nov 7, 2019
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Four former employees and an owner of the Massachusetts facility responsible for a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak that killed 76 people and sickened hundreds were convicted Thursday of fraud and other offenses.
Dec 13, 2018
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Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has been ordered to pay $10 million to the mother of a boy whose bacterial meningitis wasn't promptly diagnosed despite multiple emergency room visits.
Nov 18, 2015
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Never underestimate the staying power of big tobacco.
Feb 21, 2015
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(AP)—A Danish man has been acquitted of molesting two 17-year-old girls after he was found to suffer from a rare sleep disorder known as "sexsomnia."
Apr 10, 2013
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(HealthDay)—Laser hair removal is the most commonly litigated cutaneous laser surgery procedure, with physicians being named as defendants even when not performing the procedure, according to research published in the February ...
Mar 1, 2013
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A defendant or defender (Δ in legal shorthand) is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute. Respondent is the parallel term used in a proceeding which is commenced by petition.
In criminal law in many jurisdictions, a defendant is anyone tried as the accused. However, convention in Scotland does not recognise the use of the term "defendant" in criminal proceedings and the terms "accused" or "panel" are used instead.
A defendant in a civil action usually makes his or her first court appearance voluntarily in response to a summons, whereas a defendant in a criminal case is often taken into custody by police and brought before a court, pursuant to an arrest warrant. The actions of a defendant, and its lawyer counsel, is known as the defense. Historically, a defendant in a civil action could also be taken into custody pursuant to a writ of capias ad respondendum and forced to post bail before being released from custody. However, a modern day defendant in a civil action is usually able to avoid most (if not all) court appearances if represented by a lawyer, whereas a defendant in a criminal case (particularly a felony or indictment) is usually obliged to post bail before being released from custody and must be present at every stage thereafter of the proceedings against him or her (they often may have their lawyer appear instead, especially for very minor cases, such as traffic offenses in jurisdictions which treat them as crimes).
Most often and familiarly, defendants are persons, either natural persons (actual human beings), or legal persons (persona ficta) under the legal fiction of treating organizations as persons; this is known as jurisdicition in personam. Alternatively, the defendant may be an object, which is known as jurisdiction in rem, in which case the object itself is the direct subject of the action, with a person only indirectly subject to the action. An example of an in rem case is United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola (1916), where the defendant was not The Coca Cola Company itself, but rather "Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola". In current US legal practice, in rem suits are primarily asset forfeiture cases, based on drug laws, as in USA v. $124,700 (2006).
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
