A Mexican court of law recently sparked outrage by sentencing a young woman to six years in prison for “excessive use of legitimate defense”, because she killed the man who was raping her.

The sentencing of Roxana Ruiz, a 23-year-old single mother from Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico, on Monday has been making international news headlines all week. The young woman was charged with homicide with an excess of legitimate self-defense after she strangled the man who was raping her in her own home, and is now facing six years in prison, as well as an obligation to compensate her assailant’s family financially. Ruiz, who has already served nine months behind bars after her initial arrest in 2021, claims that she would have most likely been killed by the man raping her if she didn’t kill him first, but the judge ruled that a simple blow to the head would have been enough to incapacitate the assailant.

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A 71-year-old man in the UK reportedly spent almost 30,000 pounds ($37,000) fighting a 100-pound speeding fine over several years, but in the end sill lost the case.

Retired engineer Richard Keedwell’s troubles began in November of 2016, when during a day trip to Worcester, he was clocked by police doing 35mph in a 30mph zone. Only he didn’t agree, and recalls having his day ruined by the notice of intended prosecution (NIP) he got in the mail a few days later. He was convinced he couldn’t have been speeding, so he put down “no case to answer” on the document where he was supposed to write how he pleaded to the charges. Furthermore, he hired a video and electronics expert to prove that there must have been something wrong with the police speed camera. Little did he know this was the beginning of a long and expensive legal battle.

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A young Russian artist was recently sentenced to 11.5 years in prison for bringing home two small bottles of ayahuasca – a famous spiritual medicine prepared by indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin  – that he bought while visiting Peru.

Maxim Gert, a resident of Nizhny Tagil, a city in Russia’s Sverdlovsk Oblast, had no idea that a simple souvenir he bought on a business trip to Peru could land him behind bars for over a decade. Maxim had long been suffering from back pain, and while in the South American country, someone suggested he meet one of the local shamans and try ayahuasca, a traditional spiritual medicine with known psychoactive properties. It’s unclear whether he noticed an improvement while consuming the brew in Peru, but he did decide to continue his ayahuasca treatment at home, so he took two small bottles with him on the flight home. That turned out to be a huge mistake.

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Ordering a bag of herbal tea on the internet sounds harmless enough, but, as one young Russian man learned a couple of years ago, it can sometimes land you in prison for a very long time.

Alexei Novikov’s incredibly sad story began in September of 2015. The 34-year-old man was going to pick up his wife and daughter, who were living in Russia’s Samara region at the time, and decided to hitchhike instead of taking the bus. To cut his trip short, Novikov decided to cut through neighboring Kazakhstan, and in order to avoid any unnecessary trouble, he headed to the Isikul Road border post. Once there, he asked the border guards if he could cross the border on foot, but before answering him, they demanded that he present his backpack for inspection. And that’s when everything started going downhill for Novikov.

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An Oregon woman who allegedly left her horse outside during the winter without adequate care and shelter, causing it pain and suffering, is now being sued by the animal for more than $100,000 in damages.

It’s not every day you hear about horses taking humans to court, but in states like Oregon this sort of thing has been possible ever sing 2014, when the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that animals can be victims of crime and have legally protected rights. Justice, the horse in this particular case, is listed as a plaintiff in the legal action against its former owner, and, just like a human, has a team of lawyers fighting on its behalf.

According to Justice’s legal team at the Animal Legal Defense Fund in Portland, the 8-year-old horse has suffered a great deal of pain and suffering as a result of his former owner’s neglect and is entitled to a substantial amount of money that should go toward his current and future care and medical treatments.

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Are you ever too old to become a parent? Well, the Italian justice system seems to think so, and the tragic story of Gabriella and Luigi De Ambrosis, an elderly couple who had their natural daughter taken away and put up for adoption because they were deemed too old to take care of her is proof enough.

In 2009, 57-year-old Gabriella and 69-year-old Luigi, of Casale Monferrato, Italy, decided to have a baby, and traveled abroad to undergo an advanced in-vitro procedure. In May 2010, Gabriella gave birth to a healthy baby daughter, and the couple made national headlines. They became known as the “grandparent parents”, and faced discrimination from people deeming them too old to take care of a baby. The two recall that, while they were still in the hospital after their daughter’s birth, someone alerted child services about their age and their ability to properly tend to the infant.

Luckily for them, there was no Italian law that prevented people over a certain age from having and raising children, so they were able to take the baby home and live a normal life. However, the joy of parenthood was short-lived, as in 2011, just 15 months after their daughter was born, the De Ambrosis were accused of “abandonment” for leaving the baby unsupervised for only a few minutes. What followed was a nightmare that continues to this day.

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Raymond Lindsey Jr, of Montgomery County, Texas, was recently sentenced to 40 years in prison after rejecting a plea bargain that would have allowed him to go free.

Lindsey had been charged with assault on a public servant and retaliation, following an incident that occurred on January 5, 2015. Houston Police Department officers were dispatched to an apartment in Southeast Montgomery County for a possible domestic disturbance, where they encountered an aggressive Lindsey and his scared girlfriend. While they waited for the woman to pack up her belongings and leave the premises, the officers claimed that the defendant individually claimed to kill them. He then proceeded to destroy various items in the apartment, including a bird cage with a live bird inside, and when the police attempted to arrest him he assaulted one of the officers by slamming the door on his arm multiple times.

Lindsey had spent the 19 months since the domestic violence incident in jail, before appearing in front of jurors in the 9th District Court of Judge Phil Grant, two weeks ago. His defense attorney had explained to him that if he accepted to plead guilty to the charges he would be released on the spot, with time served. But the man simply wouldn’t hear of it, believing that he was innocent and that everybody had conspired against him.

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When 18-year-old Liu Dawei ordered 24 toy gun replicas from a Taiwanese website, in July 2014, he never imagined the purchase would soon land him in prison for the rest of his life.

Liu never even got the fake firearms he paid 30,540 RMB ($4,600) for, as his mail order was held at customs. Instead, police soon arrived at the front door of his home in Quanzhou city and arrested him for arms trafficking. According to the official police statement, they had intercepted his package and found that 20 of the 24 gun replicas were actually real guns. That sounds like a perfectly good explanation for the boy’s arrest, but only until you learn about what qualifies as a real gun in China.

Chinese law classifies any weapon with a barrel that can fire an object at 1.8 j/cm2 as a real gun. During Liu Dawei’s trial, his lawyer argued that that is roughly the speed at which he could throw a handful of beans at someone’s face, and that the country’s current definition of an actual firearm simply makes no sense. Liu himself claimed that he had no idea that he would be breaking the law when he ordered the replicas, and that he thought he was merely buying a bunch of toys.

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In a real-life story that seems taken out of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, a New York lawyer accused of fraud is actually asking for a trial by combat to settle a legal dispute.

Richard Luthmann says his bizarre request may sound ludicrous to most people, but it certainly isn’t against the law. He pointed out that the right to Trial by Combat was technically never outlawed in the state of New York, or anywhere else in America. “The common law of Britain was in effect in New York in 1776,” he told reporters “And the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution recognises the penumbra of those rights. It’s still on the books.” Historically, trial by combat was indeed a little-used but accepted aspect of English common law.

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A Texas Judge recently sparked controversy for making young Josten Bundy choose between spending 15 days in jail or marrying his 19-year-old girlfriend Elizabeth Jaynes. He took – what he thought was – the easy way out. 

It all started in February, when Bundy got into a fight with Jaynes’s ex-boyfriend. “[He] had been saying disrespectful things about Elizabeth, so I challenged him to a fight,” Bundy said. “He stepped in and I felt like it was on and I hit him in the jaw twice.” The ex, according to Bundy, did not require medical attention, but he pressed charges anyway.  “I took matters into my own hands and I know that’s wrong,” he later admitted. “I know I was raised better, but it happened.”

At one point during the hearing, Judge Randall Rogers asked Bundy if his girlfriend was worth it, to which he replied: “Well, to be honest sir, I was raised with four sisters and any man was talking to a woman like that I’d probably do the same thing.” And that’s when the judge threw Bundy a curveball. He’d have to marry Jaynes within 30 days, or spend 15 days in jail.

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75-year-old Sukumaran Menon has been living on just bread and water for almost four years now. Every morning, the puny old man travels to the same bench outside of Mahatma Gandhi Park on M.G. Road, in Bangalore City, armed with only an umbrella, fasts in protest of the government stealing his land.

Once he is seated on the bench, Menon engages in ‘Samadhana Upavasa Satyagraha’ (peaceful fasting protest), which means that he goes without food or water from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. He doesn’t carry any banners or notices and doesn’t like having his photograph taken – he just sits there, hoping that one day, justice will be served. He blindly believes that his persistence will pay off, just like it did for his hero, Mahatma Gandhi.

“Like him, I will continue my protest until justice is done,” Menon declared. “I do not talk, the government should see my plight and talk.”

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