History KangarooCourt / RealLife

* A bill of attainder was Parliament declaring someone guilty of a crime and punishing them without trial. So even if there was nothing you did wrong and no evidence of you doing anything wrong, if Parliament didn't like you, they could just have an up or down vote and have you executed (although lesser punishment was also used, such as confiscating property). No wonder that they were last used on a large scale during the UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar which ended with the King's head being chopped off (see above) and included open warfare between King and Parliament. The abuse of these attainder laws during the UsefulNotes/AmericanRevolution was so bad they are specifically banned under the United States Constitution.

* UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode. Many believe it was started with the ''specific'' intention to drive EC Comics (known for its bloody and gory horror comics) out of business and ruin Bill Gaines' reputation. While it failed in that regard (he later founded ''Magazine/{{Mad}}'', a much greater success) the Code was regarded as a tyrannical MoralGuardian for years. That is until Creator/StanLee failed to gain permission from them to bend the rules and publish an anti-drug issue of a ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'' comic despite the fact that it portrayed drugs extremely negatively and that Lee was asked to write the story on behalf of the United States government. Lee took a risk and published the story without the Comics Code approval. It ended up being a smash hit, making the people in charge of the Code look like fools. From that time, the Code's influence steadily declined, and by the 2000s, it had no real power - most mainstream titles could choose to publish a title without its approval with little fear of repercussion. By 2010, only three companies (DC Comics, Bongo Comics, and Archie Comics) still adhered to the Code; Bongo broke away in 2010 and the other two companies did so the next year, rendering the Code defunct.

* Basically every British court had aspects of this by modern standards prior to the 18th century at least. Defendants had no right to counsel, to call witnesses, to remain silent if asked any question, or to speak in their own defense (there is a reason those were in the Bill of Rights). The jury could be punished if they brought in a verdict the judge disliked. Naturally, this was the case in a lot of countries, not just there.

* UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc's trial was headed by Bishop [[HangingJudge Pierre Cauchon]], who was on the payroll of both the English Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Burgundy and handpicked the judges himself from members of the University of Paris who also hated Joan's guts. Seriously, she never really stood a chance.
Years after the trial, UsefulNotes/ThePope authorized an appeal at the request of Joan's surviving family to examine the original trial and concluded that the conviction was null and void, completely exonerating Joan [[LaserGuidedKarma (and for bonus points, excommunicating Cauchon for heresy)]]. In fact, the rehabilitation trial found that literally everything about the original trial and her incarceration leading up to it was illegal and set up solely to humiliate and brutalize a teenage girl for having the audacity to campaign for the sovereignty of her own country.

* UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc's trial was headed by Bishop [[HangingJudge Pierre Cauchon]], who was on the payroll of both the English Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Burgundy and handpicked the judges himself from members of the University of Paris who also hated Joan's guts. Seriously, she never really stood a chance. UsefulNotes/ThePope later declared the entire proceeding null and void, while completely exonerating Joan [[LaserGuidedKarma (and for bonus points, excommunicating Cauchon for heresy)]]. In fact, literally everything about the trial and her incarceration leading up to it was illegal and set up solely to humiliate and brutalize a teenage girl for having the audacity to campaign for the sovereignty of her own country.
* The 'People's Court' of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany was extreme even by the standards of an already brutal and authoritarian regime. Impartiality or fairness to those "tried" in said court were not even ''feigned''. Defendants were sometimes denied ''belts'' to hold up their trousers or given ill-fitting clothing to purposely make them look disheveled. Some trials consisted of little more than a rambling stream of invective language by the judge, Roland Freisler, a living caricature of a HangingJudge, who one time even used "OffWithHisHead" as a verdict. Fittingly, Freisler met a KarmicDeath when his courthouse took a near-direct hit during an Allied bombing raid.[[note]]To add a last wrinkle of insult to the victims of Nazi Germany to this story, Freisler's widow sued for next of kin benefits after the war and was granted them because — as the court argued — Freisler would surely have kept on in government service had he not died in the bombing raid.[[/note]] The government allowed judges to give a defendant a sentence not allowed by law ''or even to reason by analogy'' if the "healthy folk sentiment" required it. The Nazis wanted to make a [[PropagandaMachine Propaganda movie]] about Freisler's Court, but decided ultimately that the footage from the actual court proceedings was utterly unusable as [[EvenEvilHasStandards Freisler came off as an unhinged fanatic]] and would scream at the defendants - in fact, many of the defendants must be applauded for retaining a remarkable amount of courage and dignity in the face of a deck stacked against them and as sure of their impending death as they could be.

* Due in large part to political tensions and how he propped up (or failed to support) various figures during his tenure, Pope Formosus was put on trial in 897 AD, whereupon he was promptly defrocked and cast down for, amongst other things, perjury. Despite the high stakes, he never said a word in his defense. Why? Well, for one thing, he was ''dead.'' He'd perished in 896, and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod Cadaver Synod]] was and is generally regarded as one of the more comical examples of a kangaroo trial. The result rendered Stephen VI, the Pope in charge of the trial, a laughingstock: he was strangled to death half a year later, and his successor overturned the results. (Though ''his'' successor, who took part in the Synod in the first place, overturned ''that.'') Highlights of the trial included Formosus' body being questioned and ''rebuked for not answering the questions''. Corpses were even put on trial in other cases as well, though it remained rare.

** Socrates' trial is actually somewhat of a subversion. Trials were more or less StrictlyFormula back then, with families of the accused asking for leniency, standardized speeches being read out, etc. Had Socrates stuck to the speech written for him, he would have likely gotten away with a fine at the most. Instead, his action was basically ThrowingOutTheScript and reading out his own improvisation full of {{Troll}}ing. Even so, the judges had split almost equally on the matter of him being guilty. However, then came stage two; each side offering the punishment it considers appropriate, and the judges voting on that. Socrates said "How can I propose a punishment if I'm innocent? Okay, I would be willing to pay a fine (not that small, actually; most estimates put thirty minae above 100,000$ in modern money - well outside Socrates' modest finances, but his friends would have been more than happy to pay ten times as much), but I would have much preferred the right to eat in the Prytaneum (translated to modern terms: imagine Julian Assange saying in court "Your Honor, leaking out all that sensitive data did the public a service; could you give me a tax exemption for it?"). A more appropriate example would be the Trial of Generals a few years previously when the victors of a major naval battle against Sparta were tried for failing to rescue the sailors from their own lost ships. A bit of BlameGame later, two commanders fled, six were executed, Socrates being one of the few trying to stop the blatantly unconstitutional case, and actually somewhat succeeding before they were executed regardless. A few months later, the Athenians had a collective MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment, and the prosecutors were forced to run for their lives. Athens never recovered from the loss and was forced to surrender next year.

* The 'Show Trials' of Stalin's Soviet Union, in which the court was ostensibly impartial, but enemies of the state would tearfully confess to the numerous crimes they had committed against [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Comrade Stalin]], the Party and All Soviet People, and would beg the court to sentence them to the most severe penalties possible, mainly because if they didn't, [[IHaveYourWife their families would pay the price]] [[ILied This often happened anyway]], as in the case of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, who confessed to outlandish accusations of crimes against the state solely due to the fact that Stalin promised their lives and those of their loved ones would be spared. The result was them both being shot in the basement of the Lubyanka and their families either receiving similar treatment or ending up in a gulag, which wasn't much better. This was ''after'' they'd been routinely beaten, tortured, and deprived of sleep for weeks at a time. With some defendants, crimes extended back to before there even was the Soviet Union to betray, with them supposedly traitors as they were fighting with the revolution, but not in any way preventing it (the reason for the harshness is quite simple: any judges that showed leniency would often be among the next defendants).

* The 'Show Trials' of Stalin's Soviet Union, in which the court was ostensibly impartial, but enemies of the state would tearfully confess to the numerous crimes they had committed against [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Comrade Stalin]], the Party and All Soviet People, and would beg the court to sentence them to the most severe penalties possible, mainly because if they didn't, [[IHaveYourWife their families]] [[RevengeByProxy would pay the price]] [[ILied This often happened anyway]], as in the case of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, who confessed to outlandish accusations of crimes against the state solely due to the fact that Stalin promised their lives and those of their loved ones would be spared. The result was them both being shot in the basement of the Lubyanka and their families either receiving similar treatment or ending up in a gulag, which wasn't much better. This was ''after'' they'd been routinely beaten, tortured, and deprived of sleep for weeks at a time. With some defendants, crimes extended back to before there even was the Soviet Union to betray, with them supposedly traitors as they were fighting with the revolution, but not in any way preventing it (the reason for the harshness is quite simple: any judges that showed leniency would often be among the next defendants).

* The 'Show Trials' of Stalin's Soviet Union, in which the court was ostensibly impartial, but enemies of the state would tearfully confess to the numerous crimes they had committed against [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Comrade Stalin]], the Party and All Soviet People, and would beg the court to sentence them to the most severe penalties possible, mainly because if they didn't, [[IHaveYourWife their families]] [[RevengeByProxy would pay the price]] [[ILied This often happened anyway, as in the case of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, who confessed to outlandish accusations of crimes against the state solely due to the fact that Stalin promised their lives and those of their loved ones would be spared. The result was them both being shot in the basement of the Lubyanka and their families either receiving similar treatment or ending up in a gulag, which wasn't much better. This was ''after'' they'd been routinely beaten, tortured, and deprived of sleep for weeks at a time. With some defendants, crimes extended back to before there even was the Soviet Union to betray, with them supposedly traitors as they were fighting with the revolution, but not in any way preventing it (the reason for the harshness is quite simple: any judges that showed leniency would often be among the next defendants).

* The 'Show Trials' of Stalin's Soviet Union, in which the court was ostensibly impartial, but enemies of the state would tearfully confess to the numerous crimes they had committed against [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Comrade Stalin]], the Party and All Soviet People, and would beg the court to sentence them to the most severe penalties possible (mainly because if they didn't, [[IHaveYourWife their families]] [[RevengeByProxy would pay the price]], which they often did anyway, as in the case of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, who confessed to outlandish accusations of crimes against the state solely due to the fact that Stalin promised their lives and those of their loved ones would be spared. [[ILied The result]] was them both being shot in the basement of the Lubyanka and their families either receiving similar treatment or ending up in a gulag, which wasn't much better. This was ''after'' they'd been routinely beaten, tortured, and deprived of sleep for weeks at a time. With some defendants, crimes extended back to before there even was the Soviet Union to betray, with them supposedly traitors as they were fighting with the revolution, but not in any way preventing it (the reason for the harshness is quite simple: any judges that showed leniency would often be among the next defendants).

* The 'Show Trials' of Stalin's Soviet Union, in which the court was ostensibly impartial, but enemies of the state would tearfully confess to the numerous crimes they had committed against [[UsefulNotes/JosefStalin Comrade Stalin]], the Party and All Soviet People, and would beg the court to sentence them to the most severe penalties possible (mainly because if they didn't, [[IHaveYourWife their families]] [[RevengeByProxy would pay the price]], which they often did anyway, as in the case of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, who confessed to outlandish accusations of crimes against the state solely due to the fact that Stalin promised their lives and those of their loved ones would be spared. The result was them both being shot in the basement of the Lubyanka and their families either receiving similar treatment or ending up in a gulag, which wasn't much better). This was ''after'' they'd been routinely beaten, tortured, and deprived of sleep for weeks at a time. With some defendants, crimes extended back to before there even was the Soviet Union to betray, with them supposedly traitors as they were fighting with the revolution, but not in any way preventing it (the reason for the harshness is quite simple: any judges that showed leniency would often be among the next defendants).

* Thomas Jefferson's chosen method of [[AssassinationAttempt getting Aaron Burr out of the way]] in 1805-1807 was to have him framed for treason. His plan was for there to never even ''be'' a trial in the first place, and he got as far as publically delivering a guilty verdict without trial, but Chief Justice John Marshall insisted on there being a trial before any sentencing could take place; Jefferson, along with General James Wilkinson, then proceeded to forge and tamper with evidence, bribe witnesses, raid mail, and lock up anybody they thought might testify in Burr's defense. An interesting example as Marshall, the actual ''judge'', really did try to preside over the show trial as a real and impartial judge, and the KangarooCourt antics came from government interference. Ultimately the whole thing was [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] when Marshall, who was well aware that the evidence and witnesses had been tampered with, overrode Jefferson's verdict and found Burr ''not'' guilty. Still, Burr's political career was dead anyway. [[FramingTheGuiltyParty Ironically, with the evidence we have now]], notably Burr's letters to the king of England offering a loyal American empire as a vassal state in exchange for an army, it's clear that he definitely was guilty of treason.

* Similar to the above, in the medieval, Renaissance and even Early Modern periods, "animal trials" were also sometimes conducted, with livestock, domestic animals like dogs and some ''insects'' accused of crimes. These were conducted with full solemnity, the courts even appointing lawyers to defend the accused. Surprisingly, some animal defendants were acquitted or the lawyers got the charges dismissed by ingenuous arguments (e.g. that a group of rats facing charges for destroyed property from eating grain couldn't attend court safely as cats were around). It even inspired a film, ''Film/TheHourOfThePig'', with the court case taken from an actual one. Naturally, it couldn't help but be this given the "defendants" (close to a ''literal'' kangaroo court, in a way). Even ''inanimate objects'' were sometimes accused and tried (in ancient Greece, for instance, an object which killed someone accidentally would be condemned ritually and destroyed, as an example). Things similar to this lasted into the 19th century, with coroners' juries formally ruling objects "guilty" of killing people (even when no human was liable), but the object wasn't "punished" anymore by then.