Ponzi schemes are a type of investment fraud in which investors are promised artificially high rates of return with little or no risk. Original investors and the perpetrators of the fraud are paid off by funds from later investors, but there...
criminal law and procedure
post mortem
Post mortem is Latin for "after death." Some common uses of the term “post-mortem” in a legal sense include the following:
Post-mortem tax planning involves creating a plan to reduce tax liability for the estate and its beneficiaries...preliminary hearing
A preliminary hearing, also called a “probable cause hearing,” is an adversarial proceeding conducted by a judge or magistrate (and not a jury) to determine if the prosecution has enough evidence to go to trial.The hearing is limited to the...
premeditation
Premeditation is when an individual contemplates, for any length of time, the undertaking of an activity and then subsequently takes the action.
In Roby v. State, the Supreme Court of Mississippi stated that premeditation is...
pretexting
Pretexting is a social engineering scheme for committing fraud which involves the use of a fabricated story, or pretext, in order to gain a victim’s trust and trick or manipulate them into sharing sensitive information, downloading malware,...
pretrial
Pretrial, also called pretrial conference or pretrial review, is a hearing prior to trial, which all parties involved in the trial attempt to determine the issues, laws, or facts matter, before the court trial. It would be held when all...
pretrial lineup
Pretrial lineup is a procedure where police officers place an alleged criminal in a line with several other individuals to allow a witness or victim the opportunity to identify the alleged criminal. As noted by the U.S. Supreme Court in...
principal
In general, a principal is a person or thing that is more important than others when identified for a particular purpose. The term also has specific meanings in various fields of law.
In criminal law, principal refers to a...
principal in the first degree
A principal in the first degree is a person who commits a crime. The term refers to the person with the intent to commit the crime, even if the actus reus is done through an agent who lacked the intent to commit a crime. The term is meant to...
principal in the second degree
A principal in the second degree is a person that is present at the scene of a crime and aids, abets, or encourages the commission of the crime with the required criminal intent. A principal in the second degree may also be referred to as an...