The Onion Field
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The Onion Field
''The Onion Field'' is a 1973 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the kidnapping of two plainclothes LAPD officers by a pair of criminals during a traffic stop and the subsequent murder of one of the officers. Crime On the night of March 9, 1963, LAPD officers Ian Campbell (age 31) and Karl Hettinger (age 28) were riding in an unmarked police car. They pulled over a 1946 Ford coupe containing two suspicious-looking men at the corner of Carlos Avenue and Gower Street in Hollywood. The two men, Gregory Ulas Powell (age 30) and Jimmy Lee Smith (a.k.a. "Jimmy Youngblood", age 32), had recently committed a string of robberies, and "each had a pistol tucked into his trousers". Powell, the driver, pulled a gun on Campbell, who "calmly told his partner, 'He has a gun in my back. Give him your gun.'" And he did as his partner requested. The two officers were then forced into Powell's car and, within 30 seconds after ...
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Joseph Wambaugh
Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. (born January 22, 1937), is a best-selling American writer known for his fictional and nonfictional accounts of police work in the United States. Several of his early novels were set in Los Angeles and its surroundings and featured Los Angeles police officers as protagonists. He has been nominated for four Edgar Awards (winning three), and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Early life The son of a police officer, Wambaugh was born in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps at age 17 and married at 18. Wambaugh is of Irish and German descent. Police career Wambaugh received an associate of arts degree from Chaffey College and joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1960. He served for 14 years, rising from patrolman to detective sergeant. He also attended Cal State Los Angeles, where he earned BA and MA degrees. Writing career Themes Wambaugh's perspective on police work led to his fi ...
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Parole
Parole (also known as provisional release or supervised release) is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or else they may be rearrested and returned to prison. Originating from the French word ''parole'' ("speech, spoken words" but also "promise"), the term became associated during the Middle Ages with the release of prisoners who gave their word. This differs greatly from pardon, amnesty or commutation of sentence in that parolees are still considered to be serving their sentences, and may be returned to prison if they violate the conditions of their parole. Modern development Alexander Maconochie, a Scottish geographer and captain in the Royal Navy, introduced the modern idea of parole when, in 1840, he was appointed superintendent of the British penal colonies in Norfolk Island, Australia. He developed a plan to prepare them for event ...
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Parole Board
A parole board is a panel of people who decide whether an offender should be released from prison on parole after serving at least a minimum portion of their sentence as prescribed by the sentencing judge. Parole boards are used in many jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and New Zealand. A related concept is the board of pardons and paroles, which may deal with pardons and commutations as well as paroles. A parole board consists of people qualified to make judgements about the suitability of a prisoner for return to free society. Members may be judges, psychiatrists, or criminologists, although some jurisdictions do not have written qualifications for parole board members and allow community members to serve as them. A universal requirement is that board candidates be of good moral fiber. Canada New Zealand United Kingdom In the United Kingdom parole board members are also drawn from a wider circle of professions. The boards typically make a jud ...
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Corrections
In criminal justice, particularly in North America, correction, corrections, and correctional, are umbrella terms describing a variety of functions typically carried out by government agencies, and involving the punishment, treatment, and supervision of persons who have been convicted of crimes. These functions commonly include imprisonment, parole, and probation. Bryan A. Garner, editor, ''Black's Law Dictionary'', 9th ed., West Group, 2009, , 0-314-19949-7, p. 396 (or p. 424 depending on the volume) A typical ''correctional institution'' is a prison. A ''correctional system'', also known as a ''penal system'', thus refers to a network of agencies that administer a jurisdiction's prisons, and community-based programs like parole, and probation boards. This system is part of the larger criminal justice system, which additionally includes police, prosecution and courts. Jurisdictions throughout Canada and the US have ministries or departments, respectively, of corrections, co ...
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Parole Board
A parole board is a panel of people who decide whether an offender should be released from prison on parole after serving at least a minimum portion of their sentence as prescribed by the sentencing judge. Parole boards are used in many jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and New Zealand. A related concept is the board of pardons and paroles, which may deal with pardons and commutations as well as paroles. A parole board consists of people qualified to make judgements about the suitability of a prisoner for return to free society. Members may be judges, psychiatrists, or criminologists, although some jurisdictions do not have written qualifications for parole board members and allow community members to serve as them. A universal requirement is that board candidates be of good moral fiber. Canada New Zealand United Kingdom In the United Kingdom parole board members are also drawn from a wider circle of professions. The boards typically make a jud ...
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Robert F
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honour, praise, renown" and '' berht'' "bright, light, shining"). It is the second most frequently used given name of ancient Germanic origin. It is also in use as a surname. Another commonly used form of the name is Rupert. After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form ''Robert'', where an Old English cognate form (''Hrēodbēorht'', ''Hrodberht'', ''Hrēodbēorð'', ''Hrœdbœrð'', ''Hrœdberð'', ''Hrōðberχtŕ'') had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto. Robert is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots, Danish, and Icelandic. It c ...
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Sirhan Sirhan
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (; ar, سرحان بشارة سرحان ''Sirḥān Bišāra Sirḥān'', born March 19, 1944) is a Palestinian Jordanian man who was convicted for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy, a United States Senator and brother of John F. Kennedy, was shot by Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, on June 5, 1968. He died the following day at Good Samaritan Hospital. Sirhan was born to an Arab Christian family in Jerusalem, where he attended a Lutheran school. In 1989, he told David Frost: "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians." Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Palestinian–Israeli conflict in the Middle East. Sirhan was convicted of murder and is serving a life sentence at the Richard J. ...
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Cruel And Unusual Punishment
Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase in common law describing punishment that is considered unacceptable due to the suffering, pain, or humiliation it inflicts on the person subjected to the sanction. The precise definition varies by jurisdiction, but typically includes punishments that are arbitrary, unnecessary, overly severe compared to the crime, or not generally accepted in society. History The words cruel and unusual punishment were first used in the English Bill of Rights 1689. They were later also adopted in the United States by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified 1791) and in the British Leeward Islands (1798). Very similar words, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment", appear in Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The right under a different formulation is also found in Article 3 of the Euro ...
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California V
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territories of the United States by population, most populous U.S. state and the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated Administrative division, subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous Statistical area (United States), urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7million residents and the latter having over 9.6million. Sacramento, California, Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the List of largest California cities by population, most populous city in the state and the List of United States cities by population, ...
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California Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts. Since 1850, the court has issued many influential decisions in a variety of areas including torts, property, civil and constitutional rights, and criminal law. Composition Under the original 1849 California Constitution, the Court started with a chief justice and two associate justices. The Court was expanded to five justices in 1862. Under the current 1879 constitution, the Court expanded to six associate justices and one chief justice, for the current total of seven. The justices are appointed by the Governor of California and are subject to retention elections. According to the California Constitution, to be considered for appointment, as with any California j ...
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Lower Court
A lower court or inferior court is a court from which an appeal may be taken, usually referring to courts other than supreme court. In relation to an appeal from one court to another, the lower court is the court whose decision is being reviewed, which may be the original trial court or some of appellate court lower in rank than the supreme court which is hearing the appeal. In other words, lower courts are 'lower' in hierarchical chain of appellate procedure than other higher appellate courts. Usually it is obligation of a lower court to follow the decision of higher appellate court, even in civil law countries where precedents have no binding power. See also Some of common law countries use term 'lower court' or 'inferior court' as antonym for 'superior court', meaning such lower courts have only limited jurisdiction according to importance of case (usually decided by monetary amount of claims). For information on this kind of courts, see Small claims court and superior cour ...
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Life Sentence
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for which, in some countries, a person could receive this sentence include murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage, arson, kidnapping, burglary, and robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or any three felonies in case of three-strikes law. Life imprisonment (as a maximum term) can also be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offences causing death. Life imprisonment is not used in all countries; Portugal was the first country to abolish life imprisonment, in 1884. Where life imprisonment is a possible sentence, there may also e ...
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