In January 1987 Hector Escudero Aponte, a maintenance worker at the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was arraigned on ninety-six counts of murder as the result of a deadly fire at the hotel. The fire was apparently started as the result of an ongoing labor dispute. On 22 June 1987 Aponte and two accomplices were sentenced to terms ranging from seventy-five to ninety-nine years in prison for these homicides.

In October 1989 televangelist Jim Bakker was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in federal district court in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In November 1984 Margie Velma Barfield became the first woman put to death in the United States in twenty-two years. She had been convicted of murdering her fiance and three other people, including her mother.

In August 1988 U.S. Rep. Mario Biaggi of New York was found guilty of racketeering, conspiracy, and extortion in what...