Son of Sam law

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Son of Sam law" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A Son of Sam law (American English; also known as a notoriety-for-profit law) is a law designed to keep criminals from profiting from the publicity of their crimes; for instance, by selling their stories to publishers. Such laws often authorize the state to seize money earned from deals such as book/film biographies and paid interviews and use it to compensate the criminal's victims.^[1]

These laws have been criticized as violating the free-speech guarantee of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The original and namesake law from New York State was ruled unconstitutional on those grounds by the Supreme Court of the United States. New York and other states have since passed laws with similar goals that attempt to comply with the Court's decision.

In certain cases, a Son of Sam law can be extended beyond the criminals themselves to include friends, neighbors, and family members of the lawbreaker who seek to profit by telling publishers and filmmakers of their relation to the criminal. In other cases, a person may not financially benefit from the sale of a story or any other mementos pertaining to the crime.^{[citation needed]}