
A perp walk, walking the perp,
[The term "perp" is short for " perpetrator", and is commonly used by police departments for those they arrest. It is legally inaccurate since the arrested individual's guilt has not been judicially established at that point.] or frog march, is a practice in
American law enforcement
Law enforcement in the United States is one of three major components of the criminal justice system of the United States, along with courts and corrections. Although each component operates semi-independently, the three collectively form a cha ...
of taking an
arrested suspect through a public place, creating an opportunity for the media to take photographs and video of the event. The defendant is typically
handcuffed or otherwise restrained, and is sometimes dressed in
prison garb
A prison uniform is the standardized clothes worn by prisoners. It usually includes visually distinct clothes worn to indicate the wearer is a prisoner, in clear distinction from civil clothing.
A prison uniform serves the purpose to make prison ...
. Within the United States the perp walk is most closely associated with
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
.
The practice rose in popularity in the 1980s under U.S. Attorney
Rudolph Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...
, when suspects charged with
felonies were perp-walked.
The perp walk arose incidentally from the need to transport a defendant from a police station to court after arrest. Law enforcement agencies often coordinate with the media in scheduling and arranging them. It has been criticized as a form of
public humiliation that violates a defendant's
right to privacy
The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy
Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information a ...
and is prejudicial to the
presumption of innocence, but is defended as promoting
transparency
Transparency, transparence or transparent most often refer to:
* Transparency (optics), the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through a material
They may also refer to:
Literal uses
* Transparency (photography), a still ...
in the criminal justice system. American courts have permitted it on the grounds that it arises from the limitations and necessity of police procedure, but have also limited it only to those times when it is actually necessary.
Procedure
In the United States, once a person has been charged with a crime, the government may request that a judge either issue a
summons
A summons (also known in England and Wales as a claim form and in the Australian state of New South Wales as a court attendance notice (CAN)) is a legal document issued by a court (a ''judicial summons'') or by an administrative agency of governme ...
for that person or an
arrest warrant, which can lead to a perp walk. This decision is largely at the discretion of the prosecutor, with judges often deferring to it.
Since the arrest power is meant to ensure the defendant's presence in court, lawyers defending the white-collar criminals who have been perp-walked since the late 1980s have complained it is unnecessary and superfluous in their clients' cases, even if it does give the appearance of preferential treatment for wealthy defendants.
Lea Fastow
Lea Weingarten Fastow is a former Enron assistant treasurer who pleaded guilty to tax evasion and filing fraudulent Income Tax returns. The wife of former Enron executive and convicted felon Andrew Fastow, she was the second former Enron executiv ...
, the wife of former
Enron executive
Andrew Fastow, cited the perp walk she was made to take even though she had expressed her willingness to surrender to a summons in an unsuccessful motion for a
change of venue.
United States v. Fastow
', 292 F.Supp.2d. 914, 917, ( S.D. Texas, 2003). Some, like
Martha Stewart, have still managed to avoid being perp-walked by responding to summonses, or surrendering in the courtroom as soon as the indictment is presented in open court.
This did not prevent another
Houston
Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...
-area defendant, former
Dynegy natural gas trader Michelle Valencia, from undergoing a perp walk in 2003. After waiting all day for the indictment, her attorney told prosecutors she would return there the next morning. Instead, she was arrested at her home before the courthouse opened. Her attorney said prosecutors were bullying her for refusing to cooperate with them.
Similarly, lawyers for
Adelphia Communications chairman
John Rigas criticized prosecutors for having him arrested at his home on Manhattan's
Upper East Side in 2002 despite his offer to surrender.
Defense lawyers have been advised that if they are aware an indictment and arrest is imminent, to announce to the media that their client will surrender at a particular time in the near future, making a subsequent arrest and perp walk seem gratuitous.
Law enforcement
The ultimate discretion over whether a perp walk occurs belongs to the arresting law enforcement agency. Local departments may inform the media prior to an arrest even occurring, if they wish to have footage of that being broadcast.
Federal agencies, on the other hand, are generally prohibited from informing the media of arrests in advance by
Justice Department policy.
However, they cannot prohibit photography or video of a defendant being transported through public places after the arrest has been publicized.
Once the decision is made to arrest the suspect, or they have voluntarily surrendered, they are
photographed and
fingerprinted at a police station, and then taken to the appropriate courthouse for an
arraignment or similar procedure that brings the case into the legal system. The
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest i ...
(NYPD) usually advises the media
[In New York City, local media includes three daily newspapers and many weeklies, six broadcast television stations and one citywide cable channel, as well as various Internet outlets. Cases involving defendants arrested in New York often attract national and international interest, and those media are notified as well if they have expressed interest.] as to when this will happen in cases that may be of interest; other large departments do not, so photographers and camera crews wait at the central location in hopes of getting a perp-walk image.
[Dave Krajicek]
The Crime Beat: Perp Walks
''Criminal Justice Journalists''. In 2011, some New York camera crews and photographers waited 15 hours for former
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster gl ...
director
Dominique Strauss-Kahn to be brought by for his arraignment on
charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid.
Many police departments require that defendants facing
felony charges wear at least
handcuffs regardless of the nature of the crime they are accused of.
[ Clay County, Missouri, Sheriff's Department; ; August 1, 1982; retrieved June 1, 2011. The Alamo Colleges Police Department; ; June 25, 2009; p. 2, retrieved June 1, 2011.] The defendant taken to court is usually brought in through an entrance from a public area such as the street or sidewalk, often escorted by
plainclothes police officers (who may be those who have investigated the case and made the arrest, especially if multiple agencies were involved
) and sometimes accompanied by his or her attorney. Those areas are accessible to all, including the media. It is there that they may take still or moving images of the defendant, and often ask questions of him or her. In high-profile cases, with major media interest, such as a crime which has received considerable public attention or in which the defendant is a celebrity, measures such as barricades or extra uniformed officers will be present to ensure there is space to get the defendant and escorting officers into the building. "You naturally assume you're seeing a barbaric mob wreaking random havoc," writes ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' columnist
John Tierney of such scenes. "But that's not the case. It's actually a barbaric mob wreaking exquisitely planned havoc."
Defendants
Most law enforcement agencies will allow suspects to temporarily hide their faces during their perp walks. They may simply (if they are cuffed in the front or not cuffed at all) use their hands to shield their faces from onlookers and the press. Some may wear sunglasses, and some may wear hooded shirts or jackets that they then wrap tightly around their faces. Suspects sometimes pull clothing over their heads or walk with their heads down to hide their faces.
[This is also sometimes a consequence of how they are handcuffed. The police have the discretion to cuff the defendant either in front or back, with hands back-to-back or not, and tightly or loosely based on how cooperative the defendant has been and the severity of the crime he or she has been charged with. When cuffed tightly, back-to-back in the rear, it is more comfortable to walk in a slightly bent position.] Suspects also often struggle to walk and hide their faces at the same time as they are often bombarded with the microphones and cameras of the press covering their arraignments or cases. The police also sometimes provide certain defendants, such as accused current or former police officers and criminals who have been useful to them as
informants, with hoods and abbreviated perp walks from a side entrance.
Conversely, in a high-profile case, the police may accommodate the media by extending the perp walk into a "perp parade" beyond the necessary distance, such as around the block,
or delaying the court proceeding until the media can be present, as was the case at the 1999 arraignment of former
Wu-tang Clan rapper
Russell Jones on charges that were later dropped.
Perp walks were restaged for the benefit of the media until a 2000 court ruling restricted them to those necessary for law enforcement purposes.
Defendants who can anticipate their arrest often dress with the perp walk in mind.
Two former federal prosecutors turned defense attorneys advise that a white-collar defendant "should be prepared to look as professional as possible under the circumstances,"
as the fictional character Sherman McCoy does after he surrenders to face a charge stemming from a
hit-and-run accident
In traffic laws, a hit and run or a hit-and-run is the act of causing a traffic collision and not stopping afterwards. It is considered a supplemental crime in most jurisdictions.
Additional obligation
In many jurisdictions, there may be an ...
in
Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel ''
The Bonfire of the Vanities''. New York publicist Mortimer Matz recommends an old
raincoat. In addition to concealing the handcuffs, he says, it is not a problem when the garment inevitably gets smudged by fingerprint ink remaining on the defendant's hands.
New York Mafia boss
John Gotti
John Joseph Gotti Jr.Capeci, Mustain (1996), pp. 25–26 (, ; October 27, 1940 – June 10, 2002) was an American gangster and boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City. He ordered and helped to orchestrate the murder of Gambino boss ...
wore the expensive
custom-tailored suits that earned him his "Dapper Don" nickname during perp walks, in contrast to the
sweatpants
Sweatpants are a casual variety of soft trousers intended for comfort or athletic purposes, although they are now worn in many different situations. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa they are known as ...
and jackets seen among other contemporary organized-crime figures.
Susan McDougal
Susan Carol McDougal (née Henley; born 1955) is a real estate investor who served prison time as a result of the Whitewater controversy.
Her refusal to answer "three questions" for a grand jury, on whether President Bill Clinton lied in his tes ...
, subjected to a brief perp walk in a
miniskirt,
leg irons and a
waist chain
The waist is the part of the abdomen between the rib cage and hips. On people with slim bodies, the waist is the narrowest part of the torso.
''Waistline'' refers to the horizontal line where the waist is narrowest, or to the general appearan ...
as she was taken to jail for refusing to testify before
special prosecutor
In the United States, a special counsel (formerly called special prosecutor or independent counsel) is a lawyer appointed to investigate, and potentially prosecute, a particular case of suspected wrongdoing for which a conflict of interest exi ...
Kenneth Starr's
grand jury
A grand jury is a jury—a group of citizens—empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a pe ...
investigating
Whitewater, wrote of the experience in her memoir, ''The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk'':
In ''
The Bonfire of the Vanities'', lawyer Tommy Killian similarly advises Sherman McCoy to affect aloofness and indifference prior to his perp walk.
Ed Hayes, the lawyer Killian was modeled on, gives similar advice to his own clients.
Media
Reporters usually ask questions such as "Did you do it?" if the defendant is not known to have confessed to the crime, or "Why did you do it?" when they have. Usually defendants do not answer or even acknowledge, since by that point they have been
advised, as required under the
Fifth Amendment, of their
right to remain silent. One exception was Emmanuel Torres, arrested in 1984 on suspicion of murdering a woman in the course of an attempted rape. He told reporters that the victim was a "slut" and deserved her fate. At trial he
protested his innocence. His remarks during the perp walk were introduced into evidence, and he was convicted. Another defendant, in 1993, suspected of stealing
Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, turned to face the cameras and apologized to his dead parents.
Actor
Judd Hirsch's son Alex, arrested in 1995 by
Chicago police on drug charges that were later dropped, promoted an upcoming appearance by his band. An Ohio murder suspect once said "Hi Mom!" to the cameras.
Photographers find perp walks their second most-dreaded assignment after going to the home of someone who has recently died to ask for a picture. They must wait a long time for a period of a few seconds in which they will be competing with a potentially large group of other photographers and television crews. This presents the possibility that they can be trampled beneath the group, as depicted in the 1994 film ''
The Paper
''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speak ...
'', and the difficulty of photographing a defendant who may be looking downward to keep his face from view.
Marty Lederhandler, an
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. n ...
photographer who worked for the last half of the 20th century and shot the perp walks of
Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg, as well as
David Berkowitz, describes the perp walk as "it's, 'He'll be out in 10 minutes.' You line up. He comes out and into the car, and you've got your picture. Nice." When he began in the years after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, Lederhandler says, the media was more polite during perp walks than they are now. "We all had the same lenses those days, and everybody would stand 8 or 10 feet back, and nobody was pushing or shoving."
Some photographers have found creative ways around these limitations. Louie Liotta of ''
The New York Post'' told John Tierney he holds his camera near the ground, pointing upward, and walks with it for a short distance, in order to get a shot of the defendant's face as he or she is ducking downwards to avoid the cameras. Andrew Savulich of the ''
Daily News'' looks for unusual angles and juxtapositions, once putting the station house's sleeping cat in the foreground. To catch the defendant's face, he stands near the front door at the top of the steps. "For some reason, even when a guy has decided to duck his head, he usually lifts it for a second when he starts to go down steps", he explains. "You sometimes catch this lost-in-space look, the eyes fixed at a distance, as if he's trying very hard to be somewhere else." Jim Estrin of the ''Times'' says the police officers at the door sometimes block that shot for him, so he starts in the middle, shooting as he runs, and then gets on the other side of the police car for a shot as the defendant enters.
Purpose
The perp walk has been described as primarily serving the interests of the police and the media rather than the defendant or justice. "Cynics might call the perp walk the crime reporter's
red carpet", says crime reporter Art Miller. "Police and prosecutors get to show off their trophy.
elap it up because that's all we know we're going to get" since so many other aspects of the criminal justice system prior to trial take place out of public view, and even trials themselves may not always be televised or even photographed. "Those 30 seconds of a perp walk are the lifeblood to the TV news. Between that and the mug shot that is often all you got as visuals to tell a crime story."
Retired NYPD detective Nicholas Casale likens it to a service: "It promotes the arrest, it allows the defendant an opportunity to make a statement to the press, and it's centralized".
Prosecutors say it sends a message that no one is above the law, and the likelihood of being perp-walked after arrest deters criminal behavior on the part of offenders, especially white-collar criminals, who might otherwise believe they could successfully avoid conviction.
Mary Jo White, former
United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York is the chief federal law enforcement officer in eight New York counties: New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess and Sullivan. Establishe ...
, the federal prosecutor's office that handles most crimes committed in the financial sector, believes perp walks in such cases restore investor confidence.
Police say that the image of a suspect being taken into custody, when publicized, can encourage other witnesses to come forward with relevant information.
Lastly, prosecutors may be trying to get an advantage in a
bail hearing if they consider the defendant to be a
flight risk, since it bolsters their case if the defendant apparently had to be arrested.
Outside of its tactical benefit to law enforcement, "
does perform some social functions", says Tierney. "A community shaken by an act of deviancy wants reassurance that moral order has been restored, and a perp walk accomplishes this much more quickly than the courts can. But, then, so does a
lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an e ...
." He argues its real social value lies in shaming:
In a 2014 paper, Sandrine Boudana of
Tel Aviv University agrees with Tierney's analysis in more academic terms, also evoking ''
The Scarlet Letter'', saying that the perp walk, like other shaming rituals, is "the physical representation of the isolation of an individual, who is exposed ... to the gaze of an anonymous mass of others who, by their position of viewers, physically express that they (still) belong to one homogeneous group." Following the lead of psychology, she differentiates
shame from
guilt in that the former divides the self by forcing those shamed to see themselves through the eyes of others while guilt leaves the self unified. "In the media ritual, this split is not imagined by the self but actually experienced."
"Interestingly," Boudana suggests, "in its performance, the perp walk reconciles
Guy Debord
Guy-Ernest Debord (; ; 28 December 1931 – 30 November 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situation ...
and
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
's visions of modern society." In the 1970s, Foucault contrasted Debord's notions of the
Spectacle as a key element of modern society with his own theories of the surveillance society, where the
gaze is invisible. "The perp walk altogether turns justice into a spectacle and puts its audience under surveillance with the media offering the transparency of a virtual
panopticon
The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be o ...
: the threat of media shaming should deter one from perpetrating criminal acts."
Financier
Martin Shkreli's perp walk after his 2015 arrest on
securities fraud charges led to another motive being acknowledged, especially in cases where a defendant had a strongly negative public perception, as Shkreli had since he had come to the public's attention several months earlier after dramatically raising the price of a drug used by
AIDS patients and responding to the criticism in a manner widely seen as arrogant and self-absorbed: ''
Schadenfreude
Schadenfreude (; ; 'harm-joy') is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another. It is a borrowed word from German, with no direct translation ...
'', or the malicious joy taken in the sufferings of others.
Many users of the
social media platforms where Shkreli had gained that reputation responded to the arrest with taunting posts that included pictures of a handcuffed Shkreli, clad in a grey
hoodie, being escorted by FBI agents from the
Eastern District federal courthouse in Brooklyn where he was arraigned to a car taking him to detention until he made bail.
"Let's all look at the bad man in chains," ''
Gawker'' exhorted readers, in the midst of pictures and
tweets taunting Shkreli.
"Shkreli's arrest and perp walk meets everyone's criteria for a satisfying experience—excepting Shkreli himself, of course," ''
Vocativ'' commented.
The
hashtag
A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...
#Shkrelifreude trended on
Twitter for several days afterwards.
Writing for a panel of the
Second Circuit Court of Appeals, federal judge
Guido Calabresi found the perp walk serves the interests of both law enforcement and media. "
tboth publicizes the police's crime-fighting efforts and provides the press with a dramatic illustration to accompany stories about the arrest". He nevertheless
held that perp walks that did not arise naturally from the transport of arrestees but rather were staged purely for media purposes violated the
Fourth Amendment.
In a later Second Circuit decision upholding the general constitutionality of perp walks, Judge
Fred I. Parker
Fred Irving Parker (February 2, 1938 – August 12, 2003) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of V ...
agreed that perp walks were primarily driven by media interest. "Whether the accused wrongdoer is wearing a sweatshirt over his head or an Armani suit on his back, we suspect that perp walks are broadcast by networks and reprinted in newspapers at least in part for their entertainment value." But he found them to serve a legitimate state interest as well:
History
Perp walks have historical antecedents in public spectacles around the administration of justice throughout history. Within the United States, again particularly in New York City, the process has evolved over time and through some celebrated instances.
Medieval Europe
In medieval Europe, the ''end'' of the judicial process, often an execution, was often its most public, and sometimes the ''only'' public, aspect. French philosopher
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
wrote in ''
Discipline and Punish'', his influential history of the evolution of criminal justice over the course of the
Enlightenment
Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to:
Age of Enlightenment
* Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...
:
At that point, "
was the task of the guilty man to bear openly his condemnation and the truth of the crime he had committed." Convicts wore placards summing up their offense, and on the way to the
gallows
A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended (i.e., hung) or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks ...
were stopped at churches to make an ''
amende honorable'', a ceremonial plea for forgiveness.
[Foucault, 43.] The executions themselves were long, almost theatrical spectacles, such as the 1757
drawing and quartering
To be hanged, drawn and quartered became a statutory penalty for men convicted of high treason in the Kingdom of England from 1352 under King Edward III (1327–1377), although similar rituals are recorded during the reign of King Henry III ( ...
of
Robert-François Damiens for his attempted assassination of
King Louis XV. A detailed account of that procedure, the last execution by that method in French history, opens Foucault's book.
[Foucault, 3–6.]
In
medieval England as well, those convicted of
high treason were paraded through the streets in an open wagon to their executions. Originally they had been dragged by horses, but some arrived almost dead from that treatment, unable to live through the
hanging,
castration, disemboweling and drawing and quartering that followed. While being transported, they were often pelted with objects thrown at them by onlookers. "This was a symbolic process that led the criminal to oblivion," observed
Charles Spencer in ''Killers of the King'', his 2014 account of the
regicides of
Charles I, many of whom were executed this way. "The drawing through the streets provided a final, degrading journey from the living world."
In the 19th century, as penal-reform efforts began to succeed, imprisonment began to replace execution as the preferred punishment for egregious crimes, since it offered the possibility of the convict's eventual repentance. The spectacles surrounding execution became more restrained, even when those were held in public. By the middle of the century larger cities were establishing police departments, professionalizing the prevention and investigation of crime.
1890s–1960s: The early years
In the United States, the perp walks dates back more than a century, to when cameras'
shutter speed
In photography, shutter speed or exposure time is the length of time that the film or digital sensor inside the camera is exposed to light (that is, when the camera's shutter (photography), shutter is open) when taking a photograph.
The am ...
became fast enough to allow photography of a small group of individuals walking. It is believed to have been done even prior to
Theodore Roosevelt's tenure as New York City police commissioner in the 1890s.
The city's newspaper photographers soon ritualized it.
J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
(FBI), made sure the press could witness his agents bringing accused gangsters
Alvin Karpis and Harry Campbell to justice.
One of the earliest precursors of the perp walk, before the term came into use, occurred in 1903. NYPD inspector
George W. McClusky
George W. McClusky or McCluskey (1861 – December 17, 1912) was an American law enforcement officer and police inspector in the New York City Police Department. He was popularly known as "Gentleman" or "Chesty McCluskey", the latter name g ...
had arrested the principal members of the
Morello crime family, one of the earliest dominant
Mafia
"Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of ...
groups in the city, following the discovery of a mutilated, dismembered corpse later identified as a Morello associate from
Buffalo in a barrel outside a
Little Italy apartment house, the most notorious of the city's organized crime-related
Barrel Murders
A barrel murder was a method for disposing of the bodies of people killed by early American mafiosi since the 1870s, although the earliest recorded barrel murders in New York were reported in 1895 and 1900.
The victims, usually Italian immigrants ...
around the turn of the 20th century. After they had been in lockup for a night, McClusky had the cuffed suspects marched through the streets of Little Italy, in full view of their fellow
Italian immigrants
The Italian diaspora is the large-scale emigration of Italians from Italy.
There were two major Italian diasporas in Italian history. The first diaspora began around 1880, two decades after the Risorgimento, Unification of Italy, and ended in the ...
, from police headquarters to the nearby
Third Judicial District Courthouse for arraignment, claiming that the
paddy wagons in which this would normally be done had not arrived as scheduled.
American Mafia historian Thomas Reppetto not only likens this to present-day perp walks but sees further historical precedents.
Italian police of the era sometimes paraded arrested mafiosi before their communities as well, "dramatizing their powerlessness." Before them, the ancient Romans had done the same with
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
.
Many of the immigrants watching the chained Morellos being walked past them were, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported, believed to be supporting them. The police eventually had to disperse them when they feared an attempt was underway to free them from custody. "The papers liked such stories," Repetto wrote, "and so did the police. Portraying the Mafia as an all-powerful organization made their occasional victories seem all the more impressive."
ABC News
ABC News is the journalism, news division of the American broadcast network American Broadcasting Company, ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other progra ...
reporter
John Miller, who has also worked as a
press secretary for law enforcement agencies, has identified three distinct stages in the evolution of the perp walk.
Until the 1940s, suspects were paraded before reporters across a stage in the basement of police headquarters. The reporters decided if any would make a good story. After that period, reporters were assigned to individual station houses, and watched as suspects were booked and fingerprinted. They often were allowed to talk to them, and if any were deemed worthy of coverage a photo opportunity was usually provided.
Bank robber
Willie Sutton's legendary response (which he denied ever having made) of "Because that's where the money is" to a question about why he robbed banks, was said to have been uttered during a perp walk held in this fashion.
A variant of the perp walk from this era, now no longer practiced, was the "
confession shot" in which the defendant would be photographed signing or reviewing his written statement admitting to the crime.
This era ended with the 1962 Borough Park Tobacco warehouse robbery in Brooklyn. Two detectives were killed; the first double homicide of NYPD officers in 30 years led to a massive manhunt. One of the accused robbers, Tony Dellernia, surrendered in Chicago. Upon his
extradition to New York, he was perp-walked. Some photographers complained to the police at the Brooklyn precinct house where he was being held that they had missed it.
Albert Seedman
Albert A. Seedman (August 9, 1918 – May 17, 2013) was an officer with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for 30 years, known for solving several high-profile cases before resigning as chief of the Detective Bureau. He was the only Jewi ...
, a high-ranking detective, not only restaged it for reporters three hours after the original walk, he held up Dellernia's head so it would be visible. The defendant's pained expression, next to Seedman with a cigar stub in his mouth, "stretching the suspect's face as if it were pizza dough", as the ''New York Times'' put it years later, was captured in the photographs, leading to public outrage. Seedman, who later became the department's chief detective, knew he would regret it, and was later
reprimanded.
Another,
Jerry Rosenberg, also surrendered. "He is the killer," Ray Martin, the detective in charge, told the press during the perp walk, "and he is going to burn for it." After his conviction, Rosenberg sued the city and Martin for that and alleged
police brutality
Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, but is not limited to, ...
during his arrest.
Representing himself, the beginning of his career as a
jailhouse lawyer, Rosenberg won a small verdict against Martin in district court that was later reversed on appeal.
Rosenberg v. Martin
', 478 F.2d 520 (2nd Cir.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in case citations, 2d Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. Its territory comprises the states of Connecticut, New York and Vermont. The court has appellate j ...
, 1973).

The next year a perp walk ended with the defendant's death. After the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was in the vehicle wi ...
,
Lee Harvey Oswald, suspected of the crime and the related killing of a Dallas police officer, was frequently taken before the media, whose questions he sometimes answered, at the police station where he had been arrested. During the perp walk for his transfer to the county jail, he was fatally shot on live television by
Jack Ruby
Jack Leon Ruby (born Jacob Leon Rubenstein; April 25, 1911January 3, 1967) was an American nightclub owner and alleged associate of the Chicago Outfit who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, two days after Oswald was accused of th ...
, a civilian who was a frequent visitor to the police station.
As a result of that, security would be tightened on future perp walks to prevent similar killings.
1960s–1980s: The televised perp walk
In New York, the rise of television news later in that decade led to other changes. Reporters came with camera crews, which could no longer be accommodated inside precinct houses. In 1969 a group of journalists, judges and police officers drew up guidelines for perp walks after a conference. "Law enforcement and court personnel should not prevent the photographing of defendants when they are in public places outside the courtroom", they read. "They should neither encourage nor discourage pictures or televising, but they should not pose the accused." A few years later they were formally adopted by the NYPD.
Later that decade, in 1977, an amused-looking
David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam"
serial killer, was paraded in front of a large group of media after his arrest, a spectacle that calmed a city his murders had left on edge.
Three years later, following
Mark David Chapman's arrest after he
killed John Lennon, police took precautions against the sort of revenge killing that had happened to Oswald.
1980s–1990s: White-collar perp walks
In the 1980s,
white-collar criminals White collar may refer to:
* White-collar worker, a salaried professional or an educated worker who performs semi-professional office, administrative, and sales-coordination tasks, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor ...
began to be perp-walked as well, as federal prosecutors saw the public-relations value of the practice. During his tenure as
United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York is the chief federal law enforcement officer in eight New York counties: New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess and Sullivan. Establishe ...
,
Rudolph Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...
often had
Wall Street
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...
investment bankers perp-walked.
Defendants such as Richard Wigton, a
Kidder Peabody trader accused of
insider trading
Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider information ...
, were arrested at their place of business and walked off a
trading floor
Open outcry is a method of communication between professionals on a stock exchange or futures exchange, typically on a trading floor. It involves shouting and the use of hand signals to transfer information primarily about buy and sell order ...
in handcuffs with a uniformed police escort, as
Charlie Sheen's character Bud Fox is in
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of '' Midnight Express'' (1978), and wrote the gangster film remake '' Sc ...
's 1987 film ''
Wall Street
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...
''. "
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...
made an art form out of
he perp walk, says
Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson.
Former Manhattan
district attorney Robert Morgenthau agrees, calling Giuliani "the master of the perp walk".
At the same time, the term "perp walk" became common usage for the practice. ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' language columnist
William Safire found 1986 to be its earliest use in the media.
His colleague
John Tierney claims the term was in use among photographers and the police as early as the 1940s.
Major figures in
organized crime
Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally tho ...
had always been perp-walked when arrested. Later in the 1980s, one of these,
John Gotti
John Joseph Gotti Jr.Capeci, Mustain (1996), pp. 25–26 (, ; October 27, 1940 – June 10, 2002) was an American gangster and boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City. He ordered and helped to orchestrate the murder of Gambino boss ...
, head of the
Mafia
"Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of ...
's
Gambino family, "took the perp walk to a whole new level", according to Miller. He made his walks wearing the expensive
custom-tailored suits that earned him the "Dapper Don" nickname. Reporters would politely ask him how he was doing as he walked. A ''Times''
freelancer once asked him the question in formal Italian: "''Buona sera, signore, come sta''?". Gotti responded in kind "''Bene, grazie''" and turned to the cameras and smiled, giving the photographers and television cameras the memorable image they had sought.
During the
Whitewater investigation in the 1990s,
Susan McDougal
Susan Carol McDougal (née Henley; born 1955) is a real estate investor who served prison time as a result of the Whitewater controversy.
Her refusal to answer "three questions" for a grand jury, on whether President Bill Clinton lied in his tes ...
, held in
contempt for refusing to testify before
special prosecutor
In the United States, a special counsel (formerly called special prosecutor or independent counsel) is a lawyer appointed to investigate, and potentially prosecute, a particular case of suspected wrongdoing for which a conflict of interest exi ...
Kenneth Starr's
grand jury
A grand jury is a jury—a group of citizens—empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a pe ...
, was perp-walked wearing
leg irons and a waist chain as well as handcuffs, which she wore over an ensemble consisting of a jacket, white blouse,
miniskirt, black stockings and high heels. Starr was criticized for what was seen as a gratuitous attempt to humiliate an uncooperative witness. He claimed his office had nothing to do with the level of restraint she wore, and the marshals' service said that was standard for all prisoners in transit.
In 1995
Oklahoma City bomber
Timothy McVeigh, already in
Oklahoma Highway Patrol custody for a firearms violation, was paraded before television cameras by the FBI nearly three hours before he was officially arrested for the bombing.
His lawyers later asked to have
eyewitness identifications of him excluded from evidence, on the grounds that they were all based on the widely televised perp walk and none of the witness had been asked to pick him out of a
lineup
Lineup, line up or line-up may refer to:
Groupings
* A queue area of waiting people
* A police lineup, or identity parade, of suspects
* The roster of a sports team at a given time
** Batting order (baseball) in baseball
** The starting position i ...
.
1990s–present: Legal challenges and resumption
Some of the NYPD's own officers were subjected to a notable perp walk in 1994. After a wide-ranging investigation found extensive
corruption
Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption m ...
at the 30th
Precinct
Precinct may refer to:
* An electoral precinct
* A police precinct
* A religious precinct
* A shopping precinct or shopping mall
** A Pedestrian zone
Places
* A neighborhood, in Australia
* A unit of public housing in Singapore
* A former elect ...
in
Harlem, a large group of officers were arrested in uniform and led out in handcuffs before the media.
William Bratton, then the city's new
police commissioner was present, holding a
news conference
A press conference or news conference is a media event in which notable individuals or organizations invite journalists to hear them speak and ask questions. Press conferences are often held by politicians, corporations, non-governmental organ ...
to announce the arrests. He
removed the officers' badges, with the cameras rolling, and threw them in the garbage.
In the late 1990s, the NYPD stopped doing perp walks when one led to a lawsuit.
John Lauro,
doorman at an
Upper East Side apartment building, was arrested on theft charges in 1995. After his original perp walk, the detective, Michael Charles, did another one three hours later so a local television news crew could film the event. The charges were later dropped, and he filed a
Section 1983 suit against Charles, the police and the city in federal court, arguing that the perp walk was an unreasonable seizure of his person that thus violated his
Fourth Amendment rights. The judge agreed the perp walk violated the Fourth Amendment.
Lauro v. City of New York et al
', 39 F.Supp.2d 351, (S.D.N.Y.
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York State. Two of these are in New York City: New ...
, 2000) On appeal that judgement was limited strictly to perp walks staged for the media.
At the same time, another suit challenged the constitutionality of perp walks ''
per se''. In 1999, the government of
Westchester County, the suburban area directly to the north of New York City, had several of its
correctional officers arrested for filing falsified injury claims. They were videotaped by county employees immediately after their arrest at government offices, then taken to be arraigned in a local court where
county executive Andrew Spano gave a
news conference
A press conference or news conference is a media event in which notable individuals or organizations invite journalists to hear them speak and ask questions. Press conferences are often held by politicians, corporations, non-governmental organ ...
on the arrests. It culminated with the defendants being perp-walked before the media present.
The district court, relying on the Lauro case as
precedent, found the perp walk constitutional since it was necessary for law enforcement to take the defendants to court for arraignment,
Caldorola v. County of Westchester
', 142 F.Supp.2d 431, (S.D.N.Y.
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of New York State. Two of these are in New York City: New ...
, 2001) a decision again upheld on appeal.
Perp walks resumed, with many corporate executives charged in the scandals of the early 2000s, such as
Andrew Fastow and
John Rigas, subjected to them. In 2003, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq
Joseph C. Wilson evoked the perp walk, and provided another term for it, when accusing a senior
Bush Administration official of
leaking the name of his wife,
Valerie a spy, to the media as retaliation for a ''New York Times'' op-ed in which he had cast doubt on key aspects of the administration's claims in support of the
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror
, image ...
: "It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get
Karl Rove
Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) is an American Republican political consultant, policy advisor, and lobbyist. He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation on August 3 ...
frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."
Liberal critics of the administration
created images of that occurring; in 2008 a
Code Pink protester in San Francisco attempted to make a
citizen's arrest of Rove, who had by then left the government.
It was found that Karl Rove was not involved in the release of her name.
Back in Iraq, deposed dictator
Saddam Hussein made what an American photographer present called "the ultimate perp walk", in restraints, escorted by two Iraqi security personnel, with a media presence, to the start of his
trial in 2004. "I felt his anger at my camera, at me," Karen Ballard recalled, "and actually thought he might spit on me. He didn't know exactly what was about to happen and, suddenly, the formerly fierce dictator seemed small and disheveled."
To her, and other observers, it symbolized the end of his reign and the beginning of hopes for a more democratic Iraq.

In the first years of the next decade, two prominent foreign citizens were perp-walked by American law enforcement agencies.
Viktor Bout, a Russian long wanted by the U.S. and other governments for arms smuggling, was arrested in Thailand and taken past waiting media by federal
Drug Enforcement Administration agents upon his
extradition in 2010. The next year,
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then director of the
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster gl ...
and considered a leading candidate to challenge
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (; ; born 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2007 to 2012.
Born in Paris, he is of Hungarian, Greek Jewish, and French origin. Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Se ...
in the
2012 French presidential election, was
arrested and charged with the attempted rape of a hotel housekeeper. French journalists covering the incident in New York were stunned into silence when a handcuffed Strauss-Kahn was brought by them.
In France, where it is illegal to publish pictures of an identifiable person in handcuffs or police custody unless they have been convicted, the images sparked considerable public
outrage.
Two months later, criticism of the perp walk resumed when Strauss-Kahn's bail terms were reduced from
house arrest
In justice and law, house arrest (also called home confinement, home detention, or, in modern times, electronic monitoring) is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to their residence. Travel is usually restricted, if all ...
to his own
recognizance after the office of Manhattan
district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. found the housekeeper had been dishonest with them about other aspects of her story than the attack. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had earlier defended the perp walk, criticized it as "outrageous".
City Councilman David G. Greenfield introduced legislation that would ban perp walks. "I honestly believe it's unconstitutional," he said. "If we banned it here we could send a message to the country."
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the media was to blame, not his department. "If they make a decision to stake out a location when someone is walked out of the front of a precinct ... it's not a decision that the Police Department makes", he said. "We have been walking prisoners out of the front doors of stationhouses for 150 years in the Police Department ... This is how we transport people to court ... I don't think the genie's ever gonna be put back inside the bottle. That's the way it is." The legislation was seen as unlikely to pass.
Legality
In the 1931 ''
Near v. Minnesota
''Near v. Minnesota'', 283 U.S. 697 (1931), was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the US Supreme Court under which prior restraint on publication was found to violate Freedom of the press in the United S ...
'' decision, the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point ...
held that laws limiting what could be published, called
prior restraint, infringed on the
freedom of the press guaranteed by the
First Amendment to the Constitution.
['']Near v. Minnesota
''Near v. Minnesota'', 283 U.S. 697 (1931), was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the US Supreme Court under which prior restraint on publication was found to violate Freedom of the press in the United S ...
'', . "The fact that the liberty of the press may be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal", wrote
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, "does not make any the less necessary the immunity of the press from previous restraint."
[''Near'', 283 U.S. at 720, Hughes, C.J.] Later the Court would allow a limited exception for
national security
National security, or national defence, is the security and Defence (military), defence of a sovereign state, including its Citizenship, citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as p ...
purposes, in the
Pentagon Papers case, ''
New York Times Co. v. United States''.
['' New York Times Co. v. United States'', .]
In the early 1980s a series of cases established the right of the press to cover all aspects of criminal proceedings in court. The first, ''
Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia'', held that the right to be informed about government action was specifically protected by the Constitution.
['' Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia'', .] Judges may still close criminal court proceedings to the media if they believe that coverage would create a "substantial probability" of denying the defendant his or her right to a
fair trial, but must state their reasons for doing so on the record.
['' Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court of Cal., County of Riverside'', .]
With this underlying law, no defendant had challenged the constitutionality of the perp walk prior to John Lauro. Despite criticisms that it undermined the
presumption of innocence, defendants who had been convicted or pleaded guilty never claimed their rights had been violated by the perp walk, and could not claim injury to reputation from it. Lauro, who had been perp-walked only to have the charges later dropped, was the first claimant to have
standing.
''Lauro v. Charles''
In 1995 Lauro,
doorman at a small
Upper East Side apartment building, was arrested on burglary charges after a resident sent video from a
hidden camera to police that apparently showed Lauro stealing from his apartment while on vacation. After his arrest the detectives were told he should be taken on a perp walk for cameras from a local TV station, to which the tenant had licensed his surveillance video. He was taken, in handcuffs, out to a police car, driven around the block and walked back into the building.
While the video showed Lauro looking through the tenant's drawers and closets, it did not show him taking anything. On further investigation the tenant, who had allowed Lauro to enter his apartment during his vacation to water plants and deliver mail, could not identify any missing items in the areas Lauro had looked through. The charges were reduced to
attempted
petit larceny
Larceny is a crime involving the unlawful taking or theft of the personal property of another person or business. It was an offence under the common law of England and became an offence in jurisdictions which incorporated the common law of Engl ...
, a
misdemeanor
A misdemeanor (American English, spelled misdemeanour elsewhere) is any "lesser" criminal act in some common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished less severely than more serious felonies, but theoretically more so than adm ...
, and
adjourned in contemplation of dismissal. Lauro, who had been
fired, was unable to get his job back.
Lauro filed a
Section 1983 lawsuit against the city, the police department and Detective Michael Charles in federal court for the
Southern District of New York. He alleged the arrest and perp walk violated his rights under the
Fourth,
Sixth,
Eighth and
Fourteenth amendments. Judge
Allen G. Schwartz held in 1999 that the arrest was lawful but the perp walk was not.
"The perp walk conducted with plaintiff", Schwartz wrote, "was a seizure that intruded on plaintiff's privacy interests and personal rights, and was conducted in a manner designed to cause humiliation to plaintiff with no legitimate law enforcement objective or justification." He found it even more humiliating than the police stops approved by the Supreme Court in ''
Terry v. Ohio''. "In addition to the indignity of the walk itself is the fact that the police were aware that the walk was to be featured on the
Fox 5 News and exposed to the entire
New York metropolitan area
The New York metropolitan area, also commonly referred to as the Tri-State area, is the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass, at , and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. The vast metropolitan area ...
. All this in a nation where an accused is presumed to be innocent until proven otherwise."
[''Lauro'', 39 F.Supp. 2d 351, 363.]
He ruled that Charles was not entitled to
qualified immunity for his actions since ''Ayeni v. Mottola'', a previous decision of the
Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which has
appellate jurisdiction over New York, held that unnecessary media exposure by law enforcement was unconstitutional.
Ayeni v. Mottola
', 35 F.3d 680 (2nd Cir.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in case citations, 2d Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. Its territory comprises the states of Connecticut, New York and Vermont. The court has appellate j ...
, 1994).[In that case a crew from a CBS-TV newsmagazine show, ''Street Stories'', had been allowed to accompany Secret Service agents executing a search warrant.] Charles appealed to the Second Circuit himself, arguing that no court had held the perp walk unconstitutional. The next year, 2000, a panel of three judges agreed and reversed the district court, while still finding a constitutional violation.
Charles relied on two precedents, the Supreme Court's ''
Paul v. Davis
''Paul v. Davis'', 424 U.S. 693 (1976), is a United States Supreme Court case in which a sharply divided Court held that the plaintiff, whom the local police chief had named an "active shoplifter," suffered no deprivation of liberty resulting from ...
''
['']Paul v. Davis
''Paul v. Davis'', 424 U.S. 693 (1976), is a United States Supreme Court case in which a sharply divided Court held that the plaintiff, whom the local police chief had named an "active shoplifter," suffered no deprivation of liberty resulting from ...
'', . and the Second Circuit's own ''Rosenberg v. Martin'',
Jerry Rosenberg's case, to support his argument that the injury to Lauro's reputation did not in itself deprive him of his constitutional rights.
[In ''Paul'', a man who, like Lauro, was arrested on a petit larceny charge that was never formally disposed, sued a local police chief for including his name and photograph on a list of "known and active shoplifters" distributed to local retailers.] Writing for the panel,
Guido Calabresi, former dean of
Yale Law School, rejected those two arguments since in neither case had the
plaintiffs asserted a Fourth Amendment violation, as Lauro had. He turned to the perp walk itself, which he agreed seemed to be a question of
first impression.
[''Lauro'', 219 F.3d 202, 206–209.]
He looked to ''Ayeni'' and ''
Wilson v. Layne
Wilson may refer to:
People
*Wilson (name)
** List of people with given name Wilson
** List of people with surname Wilson
* Wilson (footballer, 1927–1998), Brazilian manager and defender
*Wilson (footballer, born 1984), full name Wilson Rodr ...
'',
['']Wilson v. Layne
Wilson may refer to:
People
*Wilson (name)
** List of people with given name Wilson
** List of people with surname Wilson
* Wilson (footballer, 1927–1998), Brazilian manager and defender
*Wilson (footballer, born 1984), full name Wilson Rodr ...
'', . decided by the Supreme Court the year before, as precedents. In the latter case the Court had unanimously held it was unconstitutional for reporters to accompany federal marshals executing an
arrest warrant in a private residence since their presence served no valid law enforcement purpose. Since the two cases involved private homes with a
reasonable expectation of privacy, he distinguished Lauro's by noting the perp walk had occurred on a public street and sidewalk in front of the police station.
[''Lauro'', 219 F.3d at 211–12.]
Instead, what rendered Lauro's perp walk a violation of his rights was that it had been staged. "Even assuming that there is a legitimate state interest in accurate reporting of police activity," Calabresi wrote, "that interest is not well served by an inherently fictional dramatization of an event that transpired hours earlier." He declined to rule on the constitutionality of perp walks as a general issue since that question was not before the court, and held that Charles indeed had qualified immunity because the facts of ''Ayeni'' were not sufficiently identical with Lauro's case to consider it settled law as of 1995.
[''Lauro'', 219 F.3d at 213–16.]
''Caldorola v. County of Westchester''
As the district court was getting ready to rule on Lauro's case, another challenge to the perp walk was beginning. In 1998 the Department of Corrections in
Westchester County just north of New York City began investigating whether several of its
corrections officers were falsely claiming
disability benefits
Disability benefits are funds provided from public or private sources to a person who is ill or who has a disability.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom disability benefits are covered by Department for Work and Pensions. There are numerous ben ...
.
Video surveillance found four were seemingly more active than their claimed disabilities would allow, and a fifth was living outside the state in violation of a residency requirement.
They were charged with third-degree
grand larceny, a felony, and arrested at DOC offices. County employees videotaped them being led, handcuffed, to vehicles after their arrest. At a
press conference that afternoon,
County Executive Andrew Spano announced the arrests and showed the surveillance video. He told the reporters the defendants were being arraigned at a nearby municipal court, and the defendants were made to wait until the media could film them being led into the courthouse.
They filed suit in the Southern District, alleging that the maximized media exposure of their perp walk violated their Fourth Amendment rights even though it had not been staged as Lauro's had. In 2001 Judge
Colleen McMahon ruled for the county. Videotaping the defendants under arrest on county property did not violate their privacy, since "
e fact that a person can be found in a particular place at a particular time does not give rise to some possessory interest, and it would be unreasonable to conclude otherwise." In fact, she wrote, "
aintiffs have not identified any possessory interest they had in not being videotaped, and this
urt can think of none." On the other hand, the county could have had many reasons for videotaping the defendants, such as protecting itself from later accusations of abuse or other improper conduct.
[''Caldarola'', 142 F.Supp. 2d 431, 439.]
McMahon agreed with the plaintiffs that the arrests were "choreographed", but distinguished their perp walks from Lauro's: "
e footage shot in this case was '
reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 19 ...
' (albeit with scripted stage directions). Plaintiffs were actually being transported for arrest processing, so what was filmed was legitimate law enforcement activity—not a wholly fictitious event."
[''Caldarola'', 142 F.Supp. 2d 431, 440.] In conclusion, she went further than the appeals court had in ''Lauro''.
On appeal, a panel composed of judges
Fred I. Parker
Fred Irving Parker (February 2, 1938 – August 12, 2003) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of V ...
,
Dennis Jacobs (now the Second Circuit's chief judge), and
Sonia Sotomayor (later elevated to the Supreme Court) affirmed the district court. For the panel, Parker elaborated on the defendants' minimal expectation of privacy on the property where they were arrested, saying it was irrelevant that the media were not generally allowed there: "DOC employees ... are generally aware that it is their employer's prerogative, not their own, to decide who may have access to DOC grounds ...
heycould have no reasonable expectation that other County employees would be excluded from access to DOC property merely because
heyhad been arrested." His opinion otherwise echoed McMahon's, and reaffirmed ''Lauro''
's distinction between residential and public spaces where privacy interests are at stake.
[''Caldorola'', 343 F.3d 570, 576–77.]
Reactions
The perp walk has been both criticized and defended by lawyers, journalists, politicians and the general public, both inside and outside the United States.
Legal
In a footnote to his decision in the Lauro case, Judge Schwartz made his distaste for ''all'' perp walks clear.
Critics have also said it is detrimental to the
presumption of innocence. "It's a way for the police to try their case in the press and to get the intimation of guilt by virtue of an arrest," says
New York Civil Liberties Union director Donna Lieberman. "The question is, does it poison the right to a fair trial? And that depends on each case."
Nat Hentoff of the ''
Village Voice'' observed that "
der such circumstances, even
Mother Teresa would look extremely suspicious, especially if her hands were cuffed behind her back."
Acknowledging a common response to such criticisms, that no arrested defendant is spared the perp walk, law professor
Patricia Williams
Patricia J. Williams (born August 28, 1951) is an American legal scholar and a proponent of critical race theory, a school of legal thought that emphasizes race as a fundamental determinant of the American legal system.
Early life
Williams recei ...
says "the perp walk is a social equalizer all right, but not in a good way" since
the United States leads the world in incarceration rates. "
tis hardly the greatest icon of equal rights".
The case of Richard Wigton has been cited as an example of the destructive effects of a perp walk. At the behest of
Rudolph Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...
, then
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Wigton, then head of
risk arbitrage at now-defunct
Kidder Peabody was arrested at his office on
insider trading
Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider information ...
charges in 1987.
He sobbed openly as he was walked in handcuffs past his coworkers. Three months later the charges against him and an associate were dropped, supposedly to seek an expanded indictment that never came. Giuliani's successor closed the investigation, by which time Wigton had been forced into retirement. Shortly before his death in 2007, Wigton said that he was a "victim of Giuliani's ambition."
Legal criticism of the perp walk is not limited to the defense bar.
Charles Hynes
Charles Joseph Hynes (born Charles Aiken Hynes; May 28, 1935 – January 29, 2019) was an American lawyer and Democratic politician from New York who served as Kings County District Attorney from 1990 to 2013.
Early life and education
Hynes ...
, former
district attorney for New York City's borough of
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...
, opposed perp walks and refused to have those his office prosecuted subjected to them.
In her novel ''Final Jeopardy'',
Linda Fairstein, former head of the Manhattan district attorney's sex crimes unit, has her main character, prosecutor Alexandra Cooper, ask a detective to hold off on the perp walk until all the victims have had the chance to pick the defendant out of a
police lineup, since defense lawyers were often able to exclude such identifications made after the perp walk had been broadcast.
Journalistic
Some journalists have criticized the behavior of their colleagues covering perp walks. Stephen Stock, investigative reporter for
WFOR-TV in Miami, argues that "showing this 'walk' in such circumstances is exploitative" and might be viewed as "knocking someone down a peg," if they were already well-known. "Perp walks are often the very first '
money shot
A money shot is a moving or stationary visual element of a film, video, television broadcast, or print publication that is disproportionately expensive to produce or is perceived as essential to the overall importance or revenue-generating potenti ...
s' of a high-profile crime case," says Lori Waldon, news director for
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...
station
WISN. "Those first images are important when the story breaks. But we also know that the perp walk often looks and feels like a circus. Unfortunately, those images often portray journalists at their worst."
In particular, Waldon criticizes reporters asking questions like "'Did you kill your wife?'" "It's those silly questions that elevate a perp walk to a circus. That's the stuff of a ''
Saturday Night Live'' skit. I think any question that's insulting, presumptuous or bullying is totally off limits."
Crime reporter Art Harris suggests that such questions are not designed to elicit real answers: "Usually you get no response. The journalists who shout probably know they are not going to get an answer but the reporter gets the voice on tape and his boss says, 'Hey, hey he is out there doing his job.'"
The images are often broadcast in
slow motion. "Everyone looks guilty when they're slo-mo'ed" says Waldon. She is particularly critical of the reuse of the perp walk repeatedly throughout coverage of the case, suggesting that "Those images become caricatures."
Boudana focuses on the images of the perp walk in the media, rather than the information they convey, as damaging the presumption of innocence. "
heydo not only ''identify the suspect''; they stage the 'being a suspect', that is, they offer a ''performance'' that frames our attention."
Edward Wasserman, a journalist and later
journalistic ethics professor, observed that "U.S. practices are rooted in an
adversarial principle—that the criminal-justice system, like any governmental function, needs to be watched carefully and held accountable publicly by a skeptical watchdog press ... Yet with criminal suspects, the media routinely operate not as a ''check'' on the prosecutorial state but as its ''servant'', and unwittingly mete out punishments that are less deliberate, less proportionate, less deserved, and far less accountable than those pronounced by judges."
Strauss-Kahn case
In 2011 detectives from the New York City Police Department's
Special Victims Unit walked a handcuffed
Dominique Strauss-Kahn past waiting reporters on the way to his
arraignment on
charges of sexually assaulting a hotel housekeeper. His case drew significant attention since he was, at the time, director of the
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster gl ...
and considered a leading candidate to challenge
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (; ; born 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2007 to 2012.
Born in Paris, he is of Hungarian, Greek Jewish, and French origin. Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Se ...
in the
2012 French presidential election. The charges were later dismissed.
The police department's handling of the Strauss-Kahn case was heavily criticized in his native France.
Élisabeth Guigou
Élisabeth Guigou (; born Élisabeth Vallier; 6 August 1946) is a French politician of the Socialist Party who served as a member of the National Assembly from 2002 until 2017, representing Seine-Saint-Denis' 9th constituency.
Early life a ...
, who as
French minister of justice
The Minister of Justice (french: Ministre de la Justice), also known as the Minister of Justice, Keeper of the Seals (''Ministre de la Justice, garde des Sceaux''), is a cabinet position in the Government of France. The current Minister of Justi ...
in 2000 had lobbied successfully for the passage of a law that forbids the publication of any images of an identifiable defendant in handcuffs who has not yet been convicted, criticized the walk, stating: "I found that image to be incredibly brutal, violent and cruel ... I don't see what the publication of images of this type adds."
Another former member of the
French cabinet,
Jack Lang,
Minister of Culture in the early 1980s, likened the perp walk to a
lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an e ...
.
French Senator Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a longtime acquaintance of Strauss-Kahn's, wrote on his blog that "The heart can only contract before these humiliating and poignant images ... A horrible global lynching! And what if it were all a monstrous injustice?"
The French newspaper ''
Le Monde
''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...
'' editorialized: "When one of the world's most powerful men is turned over to press photos, coming out of a police station handcuffed, hands behind his back, he is already being subjected to a sentence which is specific to him ... Is it necessary that a man's fame deprive him of his presumption of innocence in the media? Because if they must assuredly be equal before the justice system, all men are not equal before the press."
The
Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA), the agency of the French government which oversees broadcast media, reminded television stations there that it was still illegal to broadcast footage of the perp walk, as some did, even though it took place overseas. Violators could face a fine as high as €15,000; but the CSA said it would leave it to Strauss-Kahn to pursue complaints. French journalists such as Olivier Ravanello, deputy managing editor at
i-Télé, stated that the law was inapplicable to criminal proceedings in foreign countries, stating that "We can't cover the DSK story like a French story for the simple reason it is happening in the U.S. The images we saw are brutal indeed, but that's because of the nature of the U.S. judiciary."
Not all French observers reacted negatively.
Eva Joly, who as a
magistrate
The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a ''magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judici ...
brought corruption charges against Strauss-Kahn (of which he was later acquitted) and was herself expected to run for the French presidency on the
Europe Écologie-
The Greens line, agreed that the images were "very violent" but noted that the American system "doesn't distinguish between the director of the I.M.F. and any other suspect. It's the idea of equal rights" and pointed out that while American prosecutors always have to convince a jury of the defendant's guilt, their French counterparts must only do so in the most serious cases.
New York City mayor
The mayor of New York City, officially Mayor of the City of New York, is head of the executive branch of the government of New York City and the chief executive of New York City. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property ...
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He is the majority owner, co-founder and CEO of Bloomberg L.P. He was Mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and was a ca ...
agreed it was humiliating, but defended the practice, stating: "If you don't want to do the perp walk, don't do the crime. I don't have a lot of sympathy for that."
New York novelist
Jay McInerney observed, "The mayor seems to have forgotten about the
presumption of innocence, but his statement probably reflects the attitude of his constituents pretty accurately. New York's a tough place. Deal with it." Seven weeks later, when doubts about the accuser's credibility made it unlikely the case would be tried, Bloomberg reversed position, stating: "I've always thought perp walks were outrageous ...
vilify them for the benefit of theater, for the circus. You know they did it in Roman times, too."
American-born British journalist
Janet Daley remarked that the uproar in the French media over Strauss-Kahn's treatment missed the point about America's robustly open society: "The U.S. does not like secrets. Its political culture takes as a basic premise that nothing should take place out of the public view except the most critical life-or-death security matters ... And it certainly has no privacy law of the kind that has protected the great and powerful in France for generations."
A paper by Israeli researcher Sandrine Boudana two years later analyzed responses to the Strauss-Kahn perp walk in French and American print media within the context of the countries' respective cultures. While the predominant theme was French media condemning the practice and American media defending it, commentators on both sides took the occasion to reflect inwardly. Some American writers said the French had a point, and French writers in turn noted the difficulty of enforcing the Guigou law in an era where technology cannot prevent the images it forbids from being viewed in France when published overseas. Others noted that the incident also showed the pitfalls of the French media's practice of not reporting on the private lives of politicians, noting that rape allegations had been raised earlier about Strauss-Kahn on a French talk show with no media followup.
[Boudana, 58–63.]
Responses and defenses
John Tierney says that without the perp walk, reporters "would start buying old snapshots and home videos from disgruntled relatives and neighbors" and use them to depict the defendant, and those images might be more invasive and
prejudicial.
Some broader social benefits have been suggested, in particular
transparency
Transparency, transparence or transparent most often refer to:
* Transparency (optics), the physical property of allowing the transmission of light through a material
They may also refer to:
Literal uses
* Transparency (photography), a still ...
. The perp walk allows the police to demonstrate that they did not
physically abuse the defendant upon arrest or during the subsequent
interrogation
Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...
.
New York City Major Michael Bloomberg stated that "Our judicial system works where the public can see the alleged perpetrators."
Art Miller dismisses concerns that the perp walk prejudices the
jury pool: "This is not ''
Napoleonic
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
'' justice where the judge is the fact finder, prosecutor and jury. Here the people will decide ultimately. And no matter who you are, if you have been arrested for something, it is understood you are going to be subject to all the scrutiny the press is going to give you."
Israeli researcher Boudana admits that, on a purely informational level, the perp walk itself is harmless. "Indeed, from the moment when the press releases the names of suspects and the motive for their arrest, the persons are identifiable and their presumption of innocence seems to be already compromised," she observes.
In a ''
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...
'' on public shaming as punishment,
Emily Bazelon wrote that Americans have become too accustomed to perp walks for them to have any stigmatizing effect. "
t'sbecome part of the wallpaper of the American criminal justice system," she wrote.
Her description of the American perp walk as a "circus" notwithstanding, Lisa Taylor is opposed to remedies like France's
Guigou Law which forbid such photos from being published. "People who have been treated unfairly should have civil remedies, but to be that prescriptive to put a blanket on coverage, this freedom of expression proponent is nervous about a prohibition of photographing and publishing anything." Al Tompkins of the
Poynter Institute says the remedy for the perp walk's effect is to:
In other countries
In
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...
reporters are similarly allowed to witness defendants being brought to court in restraints, and photograph it. However,
Toronto Metropolitan University
Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU or Toronto Met) is a public research university located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university's core campus is situated within the Garden District, although it also operates facilities elsewhere in To ...
journalism professor Lisa Taylor says that such activities, were they undertaken deliberately to shame or humiliate a defendant, could lead to "a legal claim for abuse of legal process". This, she explains, helps avoid "the deliberate or circus atmosphere that so often surrounds high-profile arrests in the States."
Policies elsewhere in the world vary. In Britain and France defendants are brought to court in vans with blacked-out windows. In some other European countries the accused's name may not be published, or the media decline to, in order to make it easier for an offender to resume normal life after conviction. Edward Wasserman speculates that criticism of European criminal-justice systems in light of a perceived rise in crime stemming from immigration, and the availability of suppressed or unreported information online, may lead to a greater openness there. "The next U.S. export to join Starbucks and iPads in the Old World may yet be the perp walk."

Similar practices, some involving greater exposure and potential incrimination of the defendant, exist outside Europe and North America. Police in some Latin American countries have those arrested confess to the crime before the cameras. In
Mexico
Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...
, the equivalent practice is called a ''presentacion'' (
Spanish for "introduction"). Defendants suspected of involvement in the drug trade are posed for pictures surrounded by weapons, cash, and drugs, clothed in whatever they were wearing when arrested. ''Presentaciones'' have drawn criticisms similar to those directed at the perp walk.
In some Asian countries an arrested suspect is also exposed to the media. Police in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the no ...
and
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...
often invite the media to re-enactments of crimes staged by the accused,
a practice common in
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
as well. In 2010, South Korean police had a man suspected of raping a child re-enact the crime at the scene, with not only the media but angry, jeering neighbors looking on.
Prosecutors there also frequently parade white-collar suspects before the media, although even convicted felons can bring cases against them for an offense against
honor. China, where images of chained suspects have often been broadcast to deter crime, ended in 2010 a long practice of forcing suspected
prostitutes to walk in "shame parades" through the streets, after public outrage.
In 2011, police and other security forces in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
began making similar displays of suspected
insurgents and other criminals. Two defendants were taken to crime scenes to recount their role in a massacre to assembled media, while alleged members of a gang of robbers were posed behind tables stacked with the goods they had supposedly stolen. In one instance that officials later admitted they lost control of, suspected terrorists were led into an auditorium where the acting
Minister of the Interior attempted to detail their crimes before not only the media but an audience of the family members of the victims. He was unable to finish as members of the latter group interrupted him with calls for the defendants' execution and
shoeing attempts.
These practices increased after
U.S. troops left Iraq. When the government announced an
arrest warrant against former deputy prime minister
Tariq al-Hashimi
Tariq al-Hashimi ( ar, طَارِق الْهَاشِمِي, Târık el-Hâşimî; born 1942) is an Iraqi politician who served as the general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) until May 2009. He served as the Vice President of Iraq from ...
, who had fled to
the Kurdish-controlled regions of the country, it broadcast the confessions of three of his
bodyguard
A bodyguard (or close protection officer/operative) is a type of security guard, government law enforcement officer, or servicemember who protects a person or a group of people — usually witnesses, high-ranking public officials or officers ...
s to support charges that he had ordered the assassinations of rivals. This, and the other public displays of accused criminals, was criticized by foreign observers and some Iraqi officials. "It is a crime to put this on television" said one of the latter. "It is a shame, and it is a legacy of
the former dictator." Security officials responded that they were trying to assure the Iraqi public that they were actively working to protect them and apprehend terrorists. "If we say we caught the leader of
Al Qaeda, who will believe it?" said an Interior Ministry official. "This is to show credibility. We are sure we are doing the right thing."
In the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
photographing or filming defendants on court premises is illegal under section 41 of the
Criminal Justice Act 1925
The Criminal Justice Act 1925 (15 & 16 Geo.5 c.86) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Most of it has been repealed.
Section 36 of the Act makes it an offence to make a false statement to obtain a passport. The maximum sentence ...
. and the
Contempt of Court Act 1981. Former
EDL leader
Tommy Robinson was arrested for violating these statutes on May 10, 2017 when he tried to film suspected 'Muslim pedophiles' two days earlier.
Tommy Robinson Arrested For Contempt Of Court
Huffington Post UK, May 11, 2017
See also
* Crime in New York City
* Media circus
* Trial by media
* Walk of shame
Notes
References
External links
*
Constitutional Protections Against the Harm to Suspects in Custody Stemming from Perp Walks
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perp Walk
Informal legal terminology
Law enforcement in the United States
Walking