Warning: These examples contain unhidden spoilers.
Justice by Other Legal Means in Literature.
- In After the Golden Age, the supervillain Destructor is ultimately arrested not for any of his attempts to destroy Commerce City, but on charges of fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering.
- Alexis Carew: Mutineer: To spare the Navy the embarrassment of Captain Neals' behavior becoming public, the Court Martial acquits him of wrongdoing in the loss of HMS Hermione due to the mutiny and puts a gag order on the proceedings. However, Alexis and the mutineersnote are also summarily acquitted due to the extenuating circumstances of Neals's abusive treatment of his crew, especially Alexis, and Neals is effectively retired from service for psychiatric reasons and will never command anything unsupervised ever again, certainly not another ship. To top it off, the captains on the tribunal restore Alexis to the rank of midshipman (Neals had stripped her of her commission for refusing an illegal order), then immediately test her for lieutenant and promote her, and the Navy rumor mill means word of what happened still gets out in spite of the gag order.
- In Callahan's Con, when discussing a particularly Obstructive Bureaucrat, Jake claims that a cop he knew in Boston was tearing out his hair looking for a legal statute to get a well-known drug dealer arrested. Said cop finally turned up a statute, noting that Native Americans could not legally go above the first floor of a public venue — and the drug dealer, who was 1/8th Mohawk, lived on a third-floor walkup.
- In The City Without Memory, Veri-Meri, a cold-blooded traitor many times, with hundreds of mostly innocent lives to answer for, is very influential, very clever, very unscrupulous and very rich. The local high priest (extremely corrupt and ruthless himself, but not to that extent) finally finds a way to put him behind bars: for being rude in a temple.
- The Crowner John Mysteries: In Crowner's Quest, John realises there is little chance of his actually bringing the two murderers to trial. So he instead takes another legal option and challenges the knight to trial by combat, acting as the champion of the 13 year old son of one of their victims.
- In the gangster spoof Dickie Dick Dickens, our Villain Protagonist ends the first volume being arrested for bigamy, the result of an attempt to get a new identity going south.
- In The Firm when the FBI pressures Mitch McDeere to reveal his firm's shady dealings with the mob (which would violate attorney-client privilege and cost him his license, not to mention put his life in danger), he instead finds a way around it: He gives the FBI evidence that the firm is ripping off its clients by overcharging them, thus allowing the feds to prosecute fully without angering the mob.
- Judge Dee:
- In The Chinese Bell Murders, the Judge knows Lin Fan is behind a long string of crimes, including the murder of an entire family, the rape of another man's wife, bribery to get away scot-free, and salt smuggling, but can't actually prove it. While investigating, he and his men are nearly trapped under the titular bell (and discover another of Lin Fan's victims under it). The Judge manages to prove Lin Fan's guilt for the smuggling, then gets him to admit he dropped the bell on them as a "prank", then reveals the law says "an attack on an Imperial magistrate is a crime against the state", and such crimes are judged far more severely and swiftly than ordinary crimes, meaning none of Lin Fan's connections and money will not let him escape being torn apart by water buffalo.
- In the same book, the Judge has to deal with a Buddhist monastery that's been helping women conceive by raping them while claiming it's thanks to prayers to their goddess, but can't do anything overtly as the Buddhist clique in the capital would intervene to save them. He arranges a public trial, sends the guilty monks back to the town hall and orders them left outside as the prison is too small for them. The angry mob then tears the monks apart as there were too few soldiers to guard them, exactly as the judge knew when he sent the request for reinforcements.
- In the Louis L'Amour short story "Keep Travelin' Rider", Tack Gentry kills two henchmen who killed his uncle as part of a land grabbing scheme. Their boss promptly blames everything on them and claims that he's an innocent bystander, with the Texas Rangers who've just arrived frustratedly admitting there's no way to disprove this. Tack accepts this, but says that they can arrest the Big Bad for horse theft, as he's quickly able to prove that the horse the villain is riding is one the villain took from Tack when he thought Tack was dead. The villain angrily goes for his gun and follows his goons to the grave.
- The Lincoln Lawyer discussed the trope with a client charged with attempted rape. The eponymous lawyer was worried that, even if his client isn't convicted, his victim would be able to sue him. In the end, the client got away when the prison snitch called by the prosecutor to testify wasn't a reliable witness, forcing a mistrial, but the police decided to investigate his claim that the client had previously raped and killed another girl and framed an innocent man. That turns out to be true and he is convicted for it. Just as planned.
- One Lincoln Rhyme novel has the perpetrators of a False Flag Operation trying to fake a terrorist attack to build public sentiment against illegal immigrants. At the conclusion of the case there is insufficient evidence to charge them with multiple kidnappings, attempted murder or terrorism. But there is enough evidence to charge them for smuggling the explosives they used for the plot into the country, which is itself a serious offense.
- This looks like it's going to be the case in Seven Days in May. President Jordan Lyman knows the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Scott, is planning a coup, but has no solid evidence. However, Lyman has letters from the general's mistress that he could use to blackmail him into resigning. In the end the President refuses to use such an underhanded method. Fortunately, a missing piece of evidence turns up at the last minute, and Scott is forced to resign when all his co-conspirators abandon him. And in the novel, two of Lyman's allies use the letters to force Scott to abandon politics forever.
- X-Wing Series:
- In Solo Command, a thoroughly unpleasant Imperial scientist is captured by the New Republic. She strikes a deal with them — if she tells them what she knows, she gets amnesty, a new identity, and half a million credits, and since the New Republic is the good guys, they keep the deal. She's to be set free on Coruscant with that last after swearing that she won't just head back to the Empire and resume her work, but everyone knows that's exactly what she'll do. However, she also insists on being paid in Imperial credits — and when the customs official finds them, she's arrested, because carrying that much enemy currency is not only illegal smuggling, but sedition. She's then locked away.
- Brought up, with a traditional Wraith Squadron twist, in Mercy Kill. A Galactic Alliance general is suspected of belonging to a conspiracy to put The Empire back in charge, and the Wraiths are trying to find evidence of his treason. In the process, they find ample evidence of his smuggling and profiteering by selling off Alliance military property (including an Elaborate Underground Base full of contraband), and they consider setting him up to be prosecuted on this charge. However, they decide it would be too easy for him to claim that a junior officer was behind the whole thing, particularly since he recently "retained" the services of a master identity forger. The Wraiths continue to look for evidence before he can undergo a lengthy, but flawless transformation into his new identity. Then Piggy has an epiphany — the general has already undergone the process (so that he can disappear at moment's notice if need be) but is using prosthetics to masquerade as his old self in order to hunt them down. So they gather up a bunch of witnesses and reveal his "true" identity, thereby framing the general for murdering and impersonating... himself.
