The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as an impressive example and as a warning. Show trials tend to be retributive rather than correctional justice. The term was first recorded in the 1930s.
Read more about Show Trial: South America, Australia
Famous quotes containing the words show and/or trial:
“Art expresses the one, or the same by the different. Thought seeks to know unity in unity; poetry to show it by variety; that is, always by an object or symbol.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The trial by market everything must come to.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)