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A frame-up (frameup) or setup is an American term referring to the act of framing someone, that is, providing false evidence or false testimony in order to falsely prove someone guilty of a crime.^[1]

Sometimes the person who is framing someone else is the actual perpetrator of the crime. In other cases it is an attempt by law enforcement to get around due process. Motives include getting rid of political dissidents or "correcting" what they see as the court's mistake. Some lawbreakers will try to claim they were framed as a defense strategy.

Frameups in labor disputes sometimes swing public opinion one way or the other. In Massachussettes, during the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike, police acting on a tip discovered dynamite and blamed it on the union. National media echoed an anti-union message. Later the police revealed that the dynamite had been wrapped in a magazine addressed to the son of the former mayor. The man had received an unexplained payment from the largest of the employers. Exposed, the plot swung public sympathy to the union.^[2]

Frameups are often part of conspiracy theories. For example, there were frameup accusations in the anthrax incident involving the United States Postal Service.^[3]

Frameups in fiction[link]

Frameups are often used as a fictional device. An innocent party trying to prove that they have been framed for a crime is a popular theme in literature, film, and television. An example of such a storyline is the TV series, The Fugitive, later remade into a 1993 film starring Harrison Ford as the doctor trying to prove that it was not he who killed his wife, but rather a one-armed man who set him up.^[4][5]

Another TV show that used the theme was The Dukes of Hazzard, in which the protagonists (Bo and Luke Duke) were constantly being set up by the County Commissioner (Boss Hogg) and Sheriff (Rosco P. Coltrane). The "Duke boys" were always thwarting Boss and Rosco's schemes, and Boss was always concocting methods of getting the Dukes out of his hair and into prison, only to have the Dukes win out in the end every time.^[6]

On the TV show 24, the protagonist of the show, Jack Bauer, is framed in Seasons 1 and 5. In Day 1, he was selected to be the scapegoat for David Palmer's attempted assassination which was orchestrated by Serbian businessmen with ties to European & American mercenaries. In Day 5, he was framed again twice by a corrupt U.S. President for his friends' murders (David Palmer, and Michelle Dessler) in a massive government conspiracy to secure oil interests in Central Asia. Later in Season 6, Jack found out his father and his brother were complicit in that conspiracy to frame him and secure American interests. In Day 6, he finds out his father's and brother's involvement after they arranged to eliminate him. In Day 7, Bauer was framed yet again by operatives from a private military company (Starkwood) after he was getting close to interrogating one of their moles and finding out their involvement in a terrorist plot targeted against the White House by an African general and his men. Eventually, Bauer's name was cleared and he set out dismantling the conspiracy which has also corrupted the US government. The mastermind behind the private sector conspiracy was eventually caught by Jack and the FBI, also discovering that he masterminded the conspiracy in Day 5.^[7]

In the film Mission Impossible, Ethan Hunt, the hero, was framed by a mole in the CIA by killing Ethan's associates and leaving him alive in a mole hunt, thus confirming to the CIA he's the mole. Hunt is able to expose the conspiracy by smoking out the mole (who was his boss) and his supervisor, arms dealer Max, who tried to auction a CIA NOC (Non-Official Cover) list to terrorists.^[8]

On the TV show Prison Break, a former criminal named Lincoln Burrows is framed for the murder of the Vice President's brother and thrown in prison; awaiting the death penalty. Burrows's brother, Michael Scofield, hatches an ingenious escape plan to break him out. It turns out a group of multinationals who are influencing the U.S. government, framed Burrows because his father was going to expose their illegal dealings. Several Secret Service agents, and the Vice President are involved in the conspiracy. Burrows and Scofield try to expose the conspiracy while on the run.^[9]

In the film The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne, a former CIA black ops assassin, is forced out of hiding when unknown conspirators kill his girlfriend and frame him for the murder of several CIA officers. A past mission haunts him as he finds who set him up. Eventually, he finds out his former boss (Alexander Conklin)'s supervisor, Ward Abott, assigned Bourne the haunting mission to kill a Russian diplomat named Vladimir Neski. Thus, Neski was killed because he was going to expose Abott as a mole in the CIA, stealing money and sharing it with Gretkov, a Russian oil businessman. Abott had Gretkov hire a Russian FSB agent named Kirill to kill the CIA officers who were unraveling the plot and framed Bourne for it. Bourne records a conversation between Gretkov and Abott when they confront each other, implicating Abott in the conspiracy. Abott commits suicide as Bourne survives an attempt on his life by Kirill, by killing him. In the end, Gretkov is arrested and Bourne apologizes to Neksi's daughter for killing her parents.^[10]

In the video game, Driver: Parallel Lines, T.K. starts working for a New York gang in the 1970s. By the last 70s mission, T.K. is framed for the kidnapping and murder of Rafael Martinez.^{[citation needed]}

In a Hong Kong film Chinese Midnight Express, a corrupted police officer framed a journalist for hiding drugs.^{[citation needed]}

In Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, it is revealed that Peter Pettigrew framed Sirius Black for the murder of Peter himself, and he was the one who not only betrayed his friends The Marauders but that he also framed Sirius for murdering 13 people (including Harry's parents).

In The Simpsons, Krusty the Clown was framed for robbing the Kwik-e-Mart by Sideshow Bob.

See also[link]

General

• Framing (social sciences)
• Honey trap
• Identity theft

Some notable frame-ups

• Carl Ingold Jacobson, Los Angeles, California, City Council member, framed on a morals charge

References[link]

Look up Frame, frame, or frames in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A frame is a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction.

Frame may also refer to:

Engineering & construction[link]

• A-Frame, a basic structure designed to bear a load in a lightweight economical manner
  • A-Frame house, a house following the same principle
• Bicycle frame, the main component of a bicycle, onto which other components are fitted
  • Motorcycle frame, main component of a motorcycle, onto which other components are fitted
• Door frame or window frame, structures fixed to buildings, vehicles or other containers to which the hinges of doors or windows are attached and can be locked shut
• Frame (aircraft), structural rings in an aircraft fuselage
• Frame (loudspeaker) or basket, a structural component which supports the functional components of a loudspeaker
• Frame (nautical), skeleton of a ship
• Frame and panel, a method of woodworking
• Frame (vehicle), to which everything on an automobile is mounted
• Framer, a carpenter who assembles major structural elements in constructing a building
• Framing (construction), a building term known as light frame construction
• Locomotive frame, section on engine frames
• The frame or receiver, one of the basic parts of a modern firearm
• Space frame, a method of construction using lightweight materials
• Timber framing, a method of building for creating framed structures of heavy timber

General[link]

• Bed frame
• Climbing frame, a children's attraction in parks
• Distribution frame in telecommunications
• Eyeglass frame
• Frame, for definition of terms "frames" in games: bowling and snooker
• Frame (beehive), a structural element that holds honeycomb
• Frame (dance), a connection between lead and follow in partner dancing
• Frame (magazine), design magazine from the Netherlands
• Framing (social sciences), terminology used in communication theory and sociology, where it relates to the contextual presentation of media content
• Frame tale, a narrative technique, for telling stories within a story
• Frameup, to make an innocent party appear guilty of someone else's crime
• Picture frame, a solid border around a picture or painting
• Spinning frame
• Water frame

Science[link]

• FRAME Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments
• FRAME:S, therapeutic model focused on certain problems of youth
• Frame Overo, a coat pattern in horses
• Frameshift mutation, when a single base-pair is added to a DNA string, causing incorrect transcription
• Frame analysis, a social science research method used to analyze how people understand situations and activities.

Mathematics[link]

• Basis, an ordered basis is also called a "frame"
• Frame bundle, in mathematics is a principal fiber bundle associated with any vector bundle
• Frame of reference, the set of coordinates in which a system is observed
• Frame of a vector space, a generalization of a basis to sets of possibly linearly dependent vectors which also satisfy the frame condition
• Frames and locales, in order theory
• K-frame, a generalization of a basis to linearly independent sets of vectors that need not span the space
• Moving frame, in differential geometry
• Orthonormal frame, in Riemannian geometry
• Projective frame, in projective geometry
• Sampling frame, a set of items or events possible to measure (statistics)

Computer science[link]

• Frame (artificial intelligence), machine-usable formalizations of concepts or schemata that can be used for knowledge representation
• Frame (GUI), a box used to hold other widgets in a graphical user interface
• A data structure in frame languages
• Frame (networking), a data transmission unit or network packet that includes frame synchronization information
• Frame problem, in artificial intelligence
• Frame rate, the number of frames—or images—displayed on screen per unit of time, usually expressed in frames per second (FPS)
• framing, the application of networking frames using Frame synchronization
• Frame Technology (software engineering), a models-to-code system based on adaptable frames
• Framing (World Wide Web), a method of displaying multiple HTML documents on one page of a web browser
  • Iframes, a frame element in HTML code
• Stack frame, a part of a call stack

Software[link]

• Adobe FrameMaker, a desktop publishing application
• Google Chrome Frame, an open source plug-in designed for Internet Explorer
• Software framework

Arts and media[link]

• E-frame, in the animated science fiction series Exosquad
• Film frame, one of the many single photographic images in a motion picture
• Frame (album), the seventh album by Italian progressive speed metal band DGM
• Frame (1971–1990), a book of collected poetry by Barrett Watten, published in 1997
• Frames (album), a 2007 album by Oceansize
• Frame (journal), a literary journal from the Netherlands
• "Frame" (Law & Order: Criminal Intent), a 2008 episode of the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent
• Reframing (filmmaking), in film and programming
• The Frames, an Irish rock band

People[link]

• Billy Frame (1912–1992), Scottish footballer
• Fred Frame (1894–1962)
• Janet Frame (1924–2004)
• John Frame (philosopher) (born 1939)
• John Frame (cricketer) (1733–1796)
• Linley Frame (born 1971)
• Pete Frame (born 1942)
• Roddy Frame (born 1964)
• Tom Frame (1931–2006)

See also[link]

• All pages beginning with "Frame"
• All pages with titles containing "Frame"
• Framing (disambiguation)
• X-frame (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Edgar J. Steele (born July 5, 1945)^[1] is an American author and former attorney from northern Idaho, best known for serving as the defense attorney for Richard G. Butler, the founder of the white supremacist Aryan Nations. When Steele's wife, Cyndi, was contacted in May 2011 to confirm the widely-held notion that Steele represented the Aryan Nations organization, she specifically said her husband represented only Butler.

On June 11, 2010, Steele and another man were arrested and charged in connection with an alleged murder-for-hire plot to kill Steele's wife and mother-in-law. Steele's wife and other supporters, including former Louisiana State Representative David Duke, stated during Steele's trial that the allegations were false, and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrested Steele simply to silence him.

Steele was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder on May 5, 2011, and was sentenced to 50 years' imprisonment on November 9, 2011.^[2]

Notable cases[link]

Steele defended Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler in a 2000 lawsuit, which he ultimately lost.^[3] In another case, Steele challenged Idaho's hate crime laws in defending Lonny Rae, a man who had been charged with malicious harassment for shouting the pejorative word "nigger" at a referee who had slightly injured Rae's wife, Kimberly (a reporter for a local newspaper), while trying to prevent her from taking a photograph following a high school football match. Steele argued that the law breached the constitutional right to free speech under the First Amendment. Rae was cleared of this charge but sentenced to seven days imprisonment for assault.^[4] Rae's conviction was overturned on appeal, which also was handled by Steele.^{[citation needed]} Steele also formerly worked as a spokesman for Prussian Blue, a white supremacist pop music duo active in the mid-2000s.^[5]

2004 book[link]

In 2004, Steele published a book entitled Defensive Racism: An Unapologetic Examination of Racial Differences, in which he described his views on the differences between the races of the world, and questioned the motives of political correctness.^[6]

Arrest for conspiracy to commit murder[link]

In June 2010, Steele's handyman, Larry Fairfax, alleged to authorities that Steele was soliciting the murders of his wife and mother-in-law in a murder-for-hire plot. The FBI wired Fairfax for sound for a meeting between Fairfax and Steele where the plot would be discussed. Steele was thereafter arrested for conspiracy to commit murder.^[7]

Subsequently, when Steele was already in police custody, a pipebomb was found under his wife's car when she took it in for an oil change, which brought the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms into the case, and Fairfax was arrested. The charging document for Fairfax's arrest includes an admission that he manufactured and installed the bomb.^[8] Fairfax was given a 27-month prison sentence, and was transferred to home confinement in April 2012.^[9]

Trial[link]

Steele was initially assigned a federal public defender, Roger Peven, when he was arrested.^[10] In July 2010, Steele's supporters put up a website to solicit donations to hire him a private attorney. By February 2011, they had raised over $120,000 for this purpose, and hired leading Denver attorney Robert T. McAllister, as well as local Idaho attorney Gary Amendola.^[11] Steele remained incarcerated in Spokane, Washington, and Bonner County, Idaho while awaiting trial. He was relocated to Boise, Idaho, for his trial, which began on April 28, 2011.^[12] At the time of the trial, McAllister was in the process of being disbarred for converting the funds of a client to his own use.^[13]

Prosecutor Traci Whelan questioned Steele's wife Cyndi regarding her marital troubles with him.^[14] In 2000, Cyndi had caught her husband looking for women in California on match.com; she posted her own profile with a fake name and got him to reply, after which she filed for divorce. In her petition, she asked for numerous damages, including child support payments of $1,400 per month, two of the family's vehicles, and their horse ranch in Sagle, Idaho.^[15] The couple were reconciled a few months later and the divorce petition was dismissed. Nonetheless, the prosecution used this to show that Steele had a motive to kill his wife if he wanted a new girlfriend.

Steele's computer had been seized with his arrest. Under questioning, Cyndi admitted that her husband had sent 14,000 emails to large numbers of Ukrainian women between January and June 2010.^[16] Each of the women had received at least 10 emails or 100 instant messages. The prosecutor argued that this showed that Steele wanted a new girlfriend, and had a motive to kill his wife.

The prosecutor introduced several love letters written by Steele to his supposed Ukrainian girlfriend Tatyana Loginova from his jail cell while he was awaiting trial. These letters were signed by Steele and admitted without objection by Steele's attorney. In one of the letters, Steele expressed a wish to live with Loginova:

"You could, perhaps, go to school in Panama, if you like, or summer school in Ukraine, or we could find you something to do -- work at something, language instructions? Take care of our babies, make love to me, whatever will make you happy. You get to be near friends, family for half of every year. I get the same for three months each year. We both get to be warm for the winter, which can be like a huge, extended vacation each year. Our kids learn both Russian and English as they grow up. It sounds great to me. What do you think, my love?"^[17]

Loginova was later questioned over a video link from the Ukraine. The prosecutor argued that Steele desired to be with Loginova in the Ukraine, and thus had a motive to kill his wife.

Conviction and sentencing[link]

On May 5, 2011, after extended deliberation, the jury of eleven women and one man found Steele guilty on all four counts described in the indictment.^[18] In an interview after the trial ended, Steele's wife gave a passionate and critical assessment of the prosecution, judge and case elements.^[19] Steele's sentencing hearing was held on November 9, 2011, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. After making a statement in his own defense,^[20] he was sentenced to 50 years' imprisonment.^[2]

References[link]

External links[link]

• ConspiracyPenPal.com (collection of Edgar Steele's columns and commentaries)
• Biography of Edgar Steele
• SPLC Hatewatch - Racists See Set Up In Arrest of Idaho Lawyer