History KangarooCourt / RealLife

* Whether the Nuremberg trials qualify as this trope has been argued up and down the aisle, and a lot of serious legal ink has been spilled on either challenging or justifying the proceedings. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment To avoid going down a deep scholarly rabbit hole]], nobody disputes the fact that ThoseWackyNazis were very bad people who did very bad things; the arguments normally hinge on whether the Nazis received a ''fair'' trial, or [[ThereShouldBeALaw whether what they did was actually illegal at the time]], and if not, whether it was morally justified to go ahead and execute them anyway. It should be noted here, however, that the Nuremberg trials did hand down acquittals and some verdicts - particularly the twenty years in jail against Albert Speer - are actually seen as ''too mild'' by critics. It has also been objected that the Allies lacked any legal jurisdiction over the defendants (the trials had not been authorized by the newly formed United Nations for instance, unlike more recent international tribunals). However, the legal basis rested in the instrument of surrender by Germany, which had given (temporary) control over the country to the Allies, which chose to try violations of international law and the [[UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar laws of war]] (it only applied to crimes committed during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII). Other criticisms include that it upheld a {{double standard}} (as the Allies had in some cases also committed violations similar to the charges made against some Germans, especially the USSR). For instance, one charge was that Germany violated international law by conspiring to commit aggression against Poland. Yet the USSR had been a part of this conspiracy (the Allies claimed that the secret protocols of their alliance with Germany planning this were forgery), and no Soviet citizen was ever charged (naturally enough, as the USSR would not have allowed it). At the same time, the Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) was based on aggressive war as well. All Soviet leaders were relieved from being charged with war crimes. Moreover, some of the charges (such as "crimes against humanity") were undefined before the London Charter which authorized the tribunals, thus raising criticisms that they were "ex post facto" (i.e. retroactive) laws. The tribunals also used their own laws of evidence, rather than the generally accepted rules, widely admitting hearsay as one example. In some cases here, the criticisms are of being overly lenient: Admiral Dönitz was acquitted of his war crimes charges for having waged unrestricted submarine warfare on the grounds that the Allies had done it too, for instance, avoiding the accusation of {{hypocrisy}} if they had.

** That being said, Congress seemed to ''attempt'' to make it a Kangaroo Court; for instance the defense requested 40 days for evidence collection and witness prep (the same amount of time the prosecution got), but were granted only ten. Also, the presiding judge, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, tried to make rules for the court, but the Senate seemed to challenge them every single time, ostensibly because they were too fair. According to [[ThatOtherWiki]], when Chase said that President Johnson "should be permitted to present evidence" that Johnson was trying to test the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act, the Senate merely reversed it despite the fact that ''the Senate pretty much WAS the prosecution.''

* After driving out the Islamic State from their country, the Iraq government has been extremely ruthless in persecuting captured members through show trials, which are often described as 10 minutes hearings with the accused given no chance of defending itself or granted leniency. While it's understandable considering the sheer horror the terrorist group inflicted on its people, human right activists rose concerns that several members were [[ForcedIntoEvil strong armed into joining them]] such as medical staff, jihadi brides and other members that didn't necessarily commit the same crimes as its leaders and fighters. Concerns were also raised that these trials would further stigmatize the Iraqi Sunnis who were viewed by the Shias as ISIS collaborators.

* UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc's trial was headed by [[CorruptChurch Bishop]] [[HangingJudge Pierre Cauchon]], who was on the payroll of both the English [[AristocratsAreEvil Earl of Warwick]] and the [[SmugSnake Duke of Burgundy]], and handpicked the judges himself from members of the [[WickedCultured 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.

** Socrates' trial is actually somewhat of a subversion. Defendants' speeches were more or less StrictlyFormula back then, and had Socrates stuck to the one written for him, he would have likely gotten away with a fine at the most. Instead, his action was basically ThrowingOutTheScript and read out his own improvisation full of {{Troll}}ing. It ended with him claiming that he would be willing to pay a fine (not that small, actually; most estimates put thirty minae above 100,000$ in modern money), but he would have preferred the right to eat in the Prytaneum (imagine a person tried for leaking out sensitive data claiming he did the public a service, and therefore deserves a tax exemption). 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.

* UsefulNotes/VichyFrance sat up ''sections spéciales'' to try "[[LaResistance terrorists]]" and others, and the two first guys to have been sentenced by such courts (they got death sentences) were already sentenced to small prison terms for ''exactly the same acts''.

* [[WitchHung Witchcraft trials]] (the Salem Witch Trials, for example) were real and their effects cannot be discounted. Yet they were always worse where there were no senior church authorities to rein in the clergy or court of appeals to enforce basic rules of procedure. The trials in Salem were at the tail end of the witch hunt era when in most of Europe it was winding down, with the judges and juries having become increasingly suspicious of witchcraft accusations. Strangely enough, the judges actually showed mercy in one way — they were the only English witchcraft court in which if the defendants confessed, they would be spared a death sentence. The nineteen people hanged were those who had refused and staunchly professed innocence.

* On a related note, the far less well known trials of Finland's wartime leaders for allying with the Axis were viewed at the time (and now) by many as totally unjust. Initially, Finland only agreed to try the same charges as at Nuremberg that any Finns committed. Yet this soon grew into charges of getting into war with the USSR, the UK, and for "preventing peace", due to a law passed by the Finnish parliament under pressure from the Allies. It was viewed as a violation of the Finnish constitution and mockery to the rule of law, because the charges were retroactive. Further, Finland had only allied to the Axis so it could regain the territory that the USSR had taken in the Winter War. This was due to aggression, a crime prosecuted at Nuremberg. Finland officially was at war with the UK, but never fought against them directly then. Ironically, in the Winter War American and British volunteers fought along with the Finns. Some taken prisoner were later returned by Stalin after he allied with the US and UK. The leaders of Finland were therefore essentially punished for retaliating against the Soviet aggression, while the USSR was completely unpunished. However, none received more than ten years in prison, and all were paroled or pardoned before serving the entirety due partly to the backlash against this.

** This continued even ''after'' the end of the Jim Crow system, largely due to the coroner system, as detailed in gruesome detail by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington in “The Cadaver King and The Country Dentist”. (Long story short, the state of Mississippi should be ashamed of itself and all of its politicians should be impeached and replaced by black people, and its coroners should all be hanged. And the same should apply to the entire DeepSouth.)

* England's Star Chamber, originally conceived to quietly deal with the medieval equivalent of celebrity crimes, became this by the time of Charles I. One of the more {{egregious}} cases was that of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilburne John Lilburne]]; when brought before the Court he was asked how he pleaded, and when he asked what the charge was, they tortured him for a while and then asked him again how he pleaded. It was notorious for this, and has lent its name to such courts, as in "star-chamber process." They met in secret, without indictments or witnesses, and only accepted written evidence. One abusive process the Star Chamber enforced was the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilemma#Trilemma_in_law "cruel trilemma"]]. All defendants were made to swear that they would answer any question truthfully. It thus trapped them between three options: lying while under oath, viewed as a mortal sin, not just perjury (a capital crime by itself); self-incrimination or incriminating others such as family or friends; and contempt of court if they refused to swear the oath or remained silent. Over time it led to the right against self-incrimination being established in UsefulNotes/TheCommonLaw, which became part of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. It could not sentence people to death, but anything below that was permitted (branding of cheeks and cropping ears was frequent). Defendants were required to have counsel, who signed all answers (which were required to be written) by the defendant to charges against them. If their counsel would not sign it, for any reason, the defendants were held to have confessed.

* 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, their families 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 a 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 'People's Court' of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany was extreme even by the standards of the 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.
** And ''this'' was the kind of justice that the Aryan Master Race reserved for itself: by comparison, those Slavic Poles who were judged in ''Sondergerichte'' (special courts, of which the People's Court was just one) were termed "Polish subhumans" and "Polish rabble" by the court, with a judge even saying Poles should get longer sentences than Germans since they were racially inferior. Regular courts in Nazi Germany at least ''nominally'' had legal protections for defendants (such as the right to counsel) but ''Sondergerichte'' lacked any.

* All trials in the early period of the [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny People's Republic of China]] were this way. Defendants who didn't admit their guilt would be punished more severely (an aspect of mainland Chinese law that still exists today). A formal legal system didn't really exist until after Mao died anyway - the judges would be loyal party members who often had no legal training, with two [[JokerJury "people's assessors"]] who more often than not were just peasants. Even now, the PRC's legal system is not renowned for its fairness.

* In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested for the "crime" of voting (remember that the 19th Amendment was still decades away). The judge at her trial refused to allow her to testify, specifically ''ordered the jury to deliver a guilty verdict,'' (which is a violation of principles of UsefulNotes/TheCommonLaw dating from time immemorial)[[note]]A "directed verdict"--that is, ordering a jury to find for one party or another--is acceptable in civil cases. It is also acceptable in criminal cases--but only when the order is to ''find the defendant not guilty''. A criminal directed verdict of guilty is simply not allowed.[[/note]] and then entered the verdict as "guilty" when they stood mute, refused to poll the jury afterward (even after both sides asked him to), and read an opinion he had written weeks before. Anthony informed the court she would never pay the sentenced $100 fine, and she kept her word for the rest of her life. The judge said he wouldn't send her to jail instead (knowing it would lead to appeal, on which he would surely be reversed, even being quoted in some accounts as saying, in reference to her defiant vow before leaving the courtroom, "I fear that she is right, and the law will soon be changed."),[[note]]Please note that in this case, the judge ''was'' technically right--she ''had'' committed a "crime." However, that wasn't the issue. Ever since [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel%27s_Case Bushel's Case]] in 1670, juries in common-law jurisdictions have absolute authority to find however they wish on the facts of the case, and the fact that the judge's assessment of the factual circumstances (that Anthony had voted and thus committed a crime under the laws of the time) was actually, objectively right has ''absolutely no legal importance whatsoever''.[[/note]] and an embarrassed New York state government was only too happy to forget the whole thing.

* England's Star Chamber, originally conceived to quietly deal with the medieval equivalent of celebrity crimes, became this by the time of Charles I. One of the more {{egregious}} cases was that of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilburne John Lilburne]]; when brought before the Court he was asked how he pleaded, and when he asked what the charge was they tortured him for a while and then asked him again how he pleaded. It was notorious for this, and has lent its name to such courts, as in "star-chamber process." They met in secret, without indictments or witnesses, and only accepted written evidence. One abusive process the Star Chamber enforced was the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilemma#Trilemma_in_law "cruel trilemma"]]. All defendants were made to swear that they would answer any question truthfully. It thus trapped them between three options: lying while under oath, viewed as a mortal sin, not just perjury (a capital crime by itself); self-incrimination or incriminating others such as family or friends; and contempt of court if they refused to swear the oath or remained silent. Over time it led to the right against self-incrimination being established in UsefulNotes/TheCommonLaw, which became part of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. It could not sentence people to death, but anything below that was permitted (branding of cheeks and cropping ears was frequent). Defendants were required to have counsel, who signed all answers (which were required to be written) by the defendant to charges against them. If their counsel would not sign it, for any reason, the defendants were held to have confessed.

* The [[NotSoDifferent trials during the Red Scares]], particularly during the [=McCarthy=] era. They sometimes didn't need to be, as being accused of being a communist, or being associated with communism, or being associated with anyone who's associated with communism in any way would probably destroy your reputation beyond repair anyway. A lot of these weren't even trials, just Congressional hearings where people had their past associations grilled with the concluding ArmorPiercingQuestion: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" Refusal to answer meant they would be held in contempt (for which you'd be tried), since [[LoopholeAbuse it was not a ''crime'' to be a communist]], so they couldn't take the Fifth, even when answering "yes" inevitably led to them being blacklisted from their jobs. Of course, [[MortonsFork anything but full cooperation would lead to blacklisting anyway]].
* Witchcraft trials (the Salem Witch Trials, for example) were real and their effects cannot be discounted. Yet they were always worse where there were no senior church authorities to rein in the clergy or court of appeals to enforce basic rules of procedure. The trials in Salem were at the tail end of the witch hunt era when in most of Europe it was winding down, with the judges and juries having become increasingly suspicious of witchcraft accusations. Strangely enough, the judges actually showed mercy in one way - they were the only English witchcraft court in which if the defendants confessed, they would be spared a death sentence. The nineteen people hanged were those who had refused and staunchly professed innocence.

* [[Creator/{{Cicero}} Marcus Tullius Cicero]], most famed orator and lawyer of the late [[UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic Roman Republic]], lost only one case (that we know of.) He lost that case because the man on trial [[RefugeInAudacity accidentally-on-purpose murdered his political rival in full view of hundreds of witnesses]], and more importantly (for he had gotten people off worse), at the trial there were a great many armed soldiers wanting a conviction and looking at him meaningfully throughout the proceedings. Cicero's defense in this case, Pro Milone, could not even be completed, because Clodius (the victim, and a very popular man against whom many knew Cicero held a personal grudge) still had many living supporters, all of whom showed up on the day of the trial and caused a riot in the middle of Cicero's speech. Cicero was never even offered the chance to finish arguing his case. Milo, Cicero's client, is said to have later read the oration and said "If you'd finished reading this, I'd have won." The Roman court system was not known for its unshakable impartiality.

** Socrates' trial is actually somewhat of a subversion. Defendants' speeches were more or less StrictlyFormula back then, and had Socrates stuck to the one written for him, he would have likely gotten away with a fine at the most. Instead, his action was basically ThrowingOutTheScript and read out his own improvisation full of {{Trolling}}. It ended with him claiming that he would be willing to pay a fine (not that small, actually; most estimates put thirty minae above 100,000$ in modern money), but he would have preferred the right to eat in the Prytaneum (imagine a person tried for leaking out sensitive data claiming he did the public a service, and therefore deserves a tax exemption). 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.

* UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc's trial was headed by [[CorruptChurch Bishop]] [[HangingJudge Pierre Cauchon]], who was on the payroll of both the English [[AristocratsAreEvil Earl of Warwick]] and the [[SmugSnake Duke of Burgundy]], and handpicked the judges himself from members of the [[WickedCultured University of Paris]] who also hated Joan's guts. Seriously, she never really stood a chance. ThePope later declared the entire proceeding null and void, while completely exonerating Joan.

* JoanOfArc's trial was headed by [[CorruptChurch Bishop]] [[HangingJudge Pierre Cauchon]], who was on the payroll of both the English [[AristocratsAreEvil Earl of Warwick]] and the [[SmugSnake Duke of Burgundy]], and handpicked the judges himself from members of the [[WickedCultured University of Paris]] who also hated Joan's guts. Seriously, she never really stood a chance. ThePope later declared the entire proceeding null and void, while completely exonerating Joan.

* The Athenian Republic's courts could be like this as well, since they were entirely drawn from laymen selected by lot as judges who had basically total discretion in accepting or rejecting evidence and sentencing defendants. Attorneys did not exist at the time, and thus both sides [[AFoolForAClient had to represent themselves]] (though they could hire a speechwriter). Socrates' trial is usually held up as a prime example, and the man himself was recorded to complain over this in the ''[[Literature/ApologyOfSocrates Apology]].'' Particularly, along with the above there was no public prosecutor, so cases had to be brought by the alleged victim or their next of kin (if dead, a child, or woman), meaning that more frivolous charges were often laid. Both sides proposed a punishment, and Socrates angered the judges by proposing only a small fine for himself. They then sentenced him to death. Since he was well-known as a critic of Athenian democracy and the charges against him likely stemmed from that, there was probably a lot of bias against him to begin with, but that sure didn't help.

* England's Star Chamber, originally conceived to quietly deal with the medieval equivalent of celebrity crimes, became this by the time of Charles I. One of the more {{egregious}} cases was that of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilburne John Lilburne]]; when brought before the Court he was asked how he pleaded, and when he asked what the charge was they tortured him for a while and then asked him again how he pleaded. It was notorious for this, and has lent its name to such courts, as in "star-chamber process." They met in secret, without indictments or witnesses, and only accepted written evidence. One abusive process the Star Chamber enforced was the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilemma#Trilemma_in_law "cruel trilemma"]]. All defendants were made to swear that they would answer any question truthfully. It thus trapped them between three options: lying while under oath, viewed as a mortal sin, not just perjury (a capital crime by itself); self-incrimination or incriminating others such as family or friends; and contempt of court if they refused to swear the oath or remained silent. Over time it led to the right against self-incrimination being established in TheCommonLaw, which became part of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. It could not sentence people to death, but anything below that was permitted (branding of cheeks and cropping ears was frequent). Defendants were required to have counsel, who signed all answers (which were required to be written) by the defendant to charges against them. If their counsel would not sign it, for any reason, the defendants were held to have confessed.

* Whether the Nuremberg trials qualify as this trope has been argued up and down the aisle, and a lot of serious legal ink has been spilled on either challenging or justifying the proceedings. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment To avoid going down a deep scholarly rabbit hole]], nobody disputes the fact that ThoseWackyNazis were very bad people who did very bad things; the arguments normally hinge on whether the Nazis received a ''fair'' trial, or [[ThereShouldBeALaw whether what they did was actually illegal at the time]], and if not, whether it was morally justified to go ahead and execute them anyway. It should be noted here, however, that the Nuremberg trials did hand down acquittals and some verdicts - particularly the twenty years in jail against Albert Speer - are actually seen as ''too mild'' by critics. It has also been objected that the Allies lacked any legal jurisdiction over the defendants (the trials had not been authorized by the newly formed United Nations for instance, unlike more recent international tribunals). However, the legal basis rested in the instrument of surrender by Germany, which had given (temporary) control over the country to the Allies, which chose to try violations of international law and the [[UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar laws of war]] (it only applied to crimes committed during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII). Other criticisms include that it upheld a {{double standard}} (as the Allies had in some cases also committed violations similar to the charges made against some Germans, especially the USSR). For instance, one charge was that Germany violated international law by conspiring to commit aggression against Poland. Yet the USSR had been a part of this conspiracy (the Allies claimed that the secret protocols of their alliance with Germany planning this were forgery), and no Soviet citizen was ever charged (naturally enough, as the USSR would not have allowed it). At the same time, the Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) was based on aggressive war as well. All Soviet leaders were relieved from being charged with war crimes. Moreover, some of the charges (such as "crimes against humanity") were undefined before the London Charter which authorized the tribunals, thus raising criticisms that they were "ex post facto" (i.e. retroactive) laws. The tribunals also used their own laws of evidence, rather than the generally accepted rules, widely admitting hearsay as one example. In some cases here, the criticisms are of being overly lenient: Admiral Donitz was acquitted of his war crimes charges for having waged unrestricted submarine warfare on the grounds that the Allies had done it too, for instance, avoiding the accusation of {{hypocrisy}} if they had.

* Whether the Nuremberg trials qualify as this trope has been argued up and down the aisle, and a lot of serious legal ink has been spilled on either challenging or justifying the proceedings. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment To avoid going down a deep scholarly rabbit hole]], nobody disputes the fact that ThoseWackyNazis were very bad people who did very bad things; the arguments normally hinge on whether the Nazis received a ''fair'' trial, or [[ThereShouldBeALaw whether what they did was actually illegal at the time]], and if not, whether it was morally justified to go ahead and execute them anyway. It should be noted here, however, that the Nuremberg trials did hand down acquittals and some verdicts - particularly the twenty years in jail against Albert Speer - are actually seen as ''too mild'' by critics. It has also been objected that the Allies lacked any legal jurisdiction over the defendants (the trials had not been authorized by the newly formed United Nations for instance, unlike more recent international tribunals). However, the legal basis rested in the instrument of surrender by Germany, which had given (temporary) control over the country to the Allies, which chose to try violations of international law and the [[TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar laws of war]] (it only applied to crimes committed during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII). Other criticisms include that it upheld a {{double standard}} (as the Allies had in some cases also committed violations similar to the charges made against some Germans, especially the USSR). For instance, one charge was that Germany violated international law by conspiring to commit aggression against Poland. Yet the USSR had been a part of this conspiracy (the Allies claimed that the secret protocols of their alliance with Germany planning this were forgery), and no Soviet citizen was ever charged (naturally enough, as the USSR would not have allowed it). At the same time, the Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) was based on aggressive war as well. All Soviet leaders were relieved from being charged with war crimes. Moreover, some of the charges (such as "crimes against humanity") were undefined before the London Charter which authorized the tribunals, thus raising criticisms that they were "ex post facto" (i.e. retroactive) laws. The tribunals also used their own laws of evidence, rather than the generally accepted rules, widely admitting hearsay as one example. In some cases here, the criticisms are of being overly lenient: Admiral Donitz was acquitted of his war crimes charges for having waged unrestricted submarine warfare on the grounds that the Allies had done it too, for instance, avoiding the accusation of {{hypocrisy}} if they had.

* The 'Show Trials' in 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, their families 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 a 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 'People's Court' of UsefulNotes/NaziGermany was extreme even by the standards of the 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.

* All trials in the early period of the [[PeoplesRepublicofTyranny People's Republic of China]] were this way. Defendants who didn't admit their guilt would be punished more severely (an aspect of mainland Chinese law that still exists today). A formal legal system didn't really exist until after Mao died anyway - the judges would be loyal party members who often had no legal training, with two [[JokerJury "people's assessors"]] who more often than not were just peasants. Even now, the PRC's legal system is not renowned for its fairness.

* The [[NotSoDifferent trials during the Red Scares]]. They sometimes didn't need to be, as being accused of being a communist, or being associated with communism, or anyone who's associated with anyone who's associated with communism in any way would probably destroy your reputation beyond repair anyway. A lot of these weren't even trials, just Congressional hearings where people had their past associations grilled with the concluding ArmorPiercingQuestion: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" Refusal to answer meant they would be held in contempt (for which you'd be tried), since [[LoopholeAbuse it was not a ''crime'' to be a communist]], so they couldn't take the Fifth, even when answering "yes" inevitably led to them being blacklisted from their jobs. Of course, [[MortonsFork anything but full cooperation would lead to blacklisting anyway]].

* Possibly topping Ney's trial was the post-WWII Soviet war crimes trial of ''Luftwaffe'' [[AcePilot flying ace Major Erich "Bubi" Hartmann.]] The most successful fighter pilot in history, Hartmann was well-respected in the West, but hated by the USSR (who, in fairness, had contributed most of his ''three hundred and fifty two aerial victories''). Refusing orders to surrender to the British [[TheMenFirst and leave his men behind]], he was taken to the USSR and interrogated for information on German fighter tactics and the Me 262 ''Schwalbe'' jet fighter. He refused to divulge any information, and went on hunger strike. Determined to break him, the Soviets charged him with "strafing 760 civilians near Bryansk",[[note]]No evidence of such an aerial massacre exists.[[/note]] deliberately destroying "a bread factory",[[note]]He never flew any aircraft capable of such a feat.[[/note]] and destroying 345 "expensive" Soviet aircraft.[[note]]They weren't even trying by this point...[[/note]] Hartmann conducted [[AFoolForAClient his own defense]] (not that he any choice - [[EnforcedTrope the Soviets refused him any legal assistance]]) - which the judge informed him was a "waste of time" before sentencing him to 25 years of hard labor. He was finally freed from Soviet captivity in 1955, though it was not until the late [=1990s=] that the Russian Federation exonerated him.

* "Bills of attainder" are so bad, they were specifically banned after the UsefulNotes/AmericanRevolution. A bill of attainder was Parliament declaring someone guilty of a crime and punishing them without trial. So even if there is nothing you did wrong and no evidence of you doing anything wrong, if parliament does not like you, they can 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 of (see above) and included open warfare between king and parliament.

* DoubleSubverted in the Mary Phagan case. The accused Leo Frank, a Jew from New York, was convicted of raping and murdering Mary Phagan in Atlanta, Georgia, despite a wealth of evidence pointing at the black janitor (irony of ironies) who was the prosecution's chief witness, and sentenced to death. The governor of the state looked over the evidence, however, and was not convinced; accordingly, he commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, sacrificing his own political career in the process. A lynch mob broke into the prison and hanged Frank anyway, taking pictures which sold widely in the South. This case was what led to the formation of the Anti-Defamation League.

** And this was the kind of justice folks Hitler viewed as members of the MasterRace got: the Slavic Poles who were judged in ''Sondergerichte'' (special courts, of which the People's Court was just one) were termed "Polish subhumans" and "Polish rabble" by the court, with a judge even saying Poles should get longer sentences than Germans since they were racially inferior. Regular courts in Nazi Germany at least ''nominally'' had legal protections for defendants (such as the right to counsel) but ''Sondergerichte'' lacked any.

* In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested for the "crime" of voting (remember that the 19th Amendment was still decades away). The judge at her trial refused to allow her to testify, specifically ''ordered the jury to deliver a guilty verdict,'' (which is a violation of principles of UsefulNotes/TheCommonLaw dating from time immemorial)[[note]]A "directed verdict"--that is, ordering a jury to find for one party or another--is acceptable in civil cases. It is also acceptable in criminal cases--but only when the order is to ''find the defendant not guilty''. A criminal directed verdict of guilty is simply not allowed.[[/note]] and then entered the verdict as "guilty" when they stood mute, refused to poll the jury afterward (even after both sides asked him to), and read an opinion he had written weeks before. Anthony informed the court she would never pay the sentenced $100 fine. The judge said he wouldn't send her to jail instead (knowing it would lead to appeal, on which he would surely be reversed),[[note]]Please note that in this case, the judge ''was'' technically right--she ''had'' committed a "crime." However, that wasn't the issue. Ever since [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel%27s_Case Bushel's Case]] in 1670, juries in common-law jurisdictions have absolute authority to find however they wish on the facts of the case, and the fact that the judge's assessment of the factual circumstances (that Anthony had voted and thus committed a crime under the laws of the time) was actually, objectively right has ''absolutely no legal importance whatsoever''.[[/note]] and an embarrassed New York state government was only too happy to forget the whole thing.

* Many years after when the trial of Jesus probably took place, Pilate was recalled to Rome on nothing more than the word of the Syrian governor Vitellius after putting down a Samaritan rebellion and summarily executing a number of its participants. On the day Pilate was to answer the charges the aggrieved Samaritans had lodged against him in court in front of Emperor Tiberius, Tiberius died. What became of Pilate after that [[WhateverHappenedToTheMouse is lost to posterity]]: while he may have had his day in court under the newly inaugurated (and not yet criminally insane) Emperor Caligula, we have no historical records of a conviction; neither was he ever restored to his post in Judea. In any event, he never got to face his accusers in any historical record, which is why the secular histories are so heavily biased against him (Philo, who made a lot of the accusations, was not exactly a reliable historian).

* UsefulNotes/VichyFrance sat up ''sections spéciales'' to try "[[LaResistence terrorists]]" and others, and the two first guys to have been sentenced by such courts (they got death sentences) were already sentenced to small prison terms for ''exactly the same acts''.

* Downplayed with the "Kafka trap" argument, which is an interpersonal version of this. It involves making an AbominationAccusationAttack], and when the person denies it, saying that "Only a[n abomination] would say that."

* Downplayed with the "Kafka trap" argument, which is an interpersonal version of this. "[AbominationAccusationAttack]." "I am not." "Only a[n abomination] would say that."

* Whether the Nuremberg trials qualify as this trope has been argued up and down the aisle, and a lot of serious legal ink has been spilled on either challenging or justifying the proceedings. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment To avoid going down a deep scholarly rabbit hole]], nobody disputes the fact that ThoseWackyNazis were very bad people who did very bad things; the arguments normally hinge on whether the Nazis received a ''fair'' trial, or [[ThereShouldBeALaw whether what they did was actually illegal at the time]], and if not, whether it was morally justified to go ahead and execute them anyway. It should be noted here, however, that the Nuremberg trials did hand down acquittals and some verdicts - particularly the twenty years in jail against Albert Speer - are actually seen as ''too mild'' by critics. It has also been objected that the Allies lacked any legal jurisdiction over the defendants (the trials had not been authorized by the newly formed United Nations for instance, unlike more recent international tribunals). However, the legal basis rested in the instrument of surrender by Germany, which had given (temporary) control over the country to the Allies, which chose to try violations of international law and the [[TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar laws of war]] (it only applied to crimes committed during WorldWarTwo). Other criticisms include that it upheld a {{double standard}} (as the Allies had in some cases also committed violations similar to the charges made against some Germans, especially the USSR). For instance, one charge was that Germany violated international law by conspiring to commit aggression against Poland. Yet the USSR had been a part of this conspiracy (the Allies claimed that the secret protocols of their alliance with Germany planning this were forgery), and no Soviet citizen was ever charged (naturally enough, as the USSR would not have allowed it). At the same time, the Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) was based on aggressive war as well. All Soviet leaders were relieved from being charged with war crimes. Moreover, some of the charges (such as "crimes against humanity") were undefined before the London Charter which authorized the tribunals, thus raising criticisms that they were "ex post facto" (i.e. retroactive) laws. The tribunals also used their own laws of evidence, rather than the generally accepted rules, widely admitting hearsay as one example. In some cases here, the criticisms are of being overly lenient: Admiral Donitz was acquitted of his war crimes charges for having waged unrestricted submarine warfare on the grounds that the Allies had done it too, for instance, avoiding the accusation of {{hypocrisy}} if they had.

* UsefulNotes/MataHari's trial had an outcome that was very much a foregone conclusion; her defense attorney, veteran international lawyer Edouard Clunet, faced impossible odds; he was denied permission either to cross-examine the prosecution's witnesses or to examine his own witnesses directly (unfortunately unlike many such victims who are VindicatedByHistory, German documents unsealed in the 1970's proved her guilt pretty clearly.)

* While {{UsefulNotes/Venezuela}}'s courts in general can be considered examples, after coming under government control, taking the government's side 100% of the time, the trial of Leopoldo López, Venezuela's then-most prominent opposition leader, is a particularly blatant example. For example, while the prosecution was allowed to present over 100 witnesses against him, he and his defense were, out of 63 available witnesses, only allowed to present 1. He was ultimately sentenced to almost 14 years in prison.

* Australian tourist Schapelle Corby was arrested in Indonesia for drug smuggling in 2005. During her trial the judges would ignore her defense, read or chat. News and current affairs ran stories that amounted to Indonesia being disinterested in guilt or innocence to the point of suggesting disposing of the evidence crime rather than let police know. Indonesia had even made threats against Australia and had committed acts such as flooding the country with asylum seekers much like Fidel Castro did during the the Mariel boatlift, and had made their feelings and racism in response to bids for a fair trial very clear.

* Downplayed with the "Kafka trap" argument, which isan interpersonal version of this. "[AbominationAccusationAttack]." "I am not." "Only a[n abomination] would say that."