In English criminal law, attainder or attinctura is the stain or corruption of blood which arises from being condemned for any crime. February 2006 : ← - January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December- → 28 February 2006 (Tuesday) Al Askari Mosque bombing: Sixty-eight people have been killed so far today in Baghdad, Iraq. ... Criminal law (also known as penal law) is the body of common law that punishes criminals for committing offences against the state. ...

Attainder by confession is either by pleading guilty at the bar before the judges, and not putting one's self on one's trial by a jury; or before the coroner in sanctuary, when in ancient times, the offender was obliged to abjure the realm.

Attainder by verdict is when the prisoner at the bar pleads not guilty to the indictment, and is pronounced guilty by the verdict of the jury.

Attainder by process or outlawry is when the party flees, and is subsequently outlawed. Butch Cassidy, a famous Western American outlaw An outlaw, a person living the lifestyle of outlawry, meaning literally outside of the law. ...

A bill of attainder is a bill brought into Parliament for attainting persons condemned for high treason. Notably, a person thus attainted need not have been convicted of treason in court of law; attainder has therefore historically been used for political purposes, where the guilt of a person would be difficult to prove or even fictitious. The U.S. Constitution Art. I, sect. IX, 3, provides that no bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed; bills of attainder were abolished in the United Kingdom in 1870. A bill of attainder (also known as an act or writ of attainder) was an act of legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime, and punishing them, without benefit of a trial. ... Under English, and later British law, high treason is the crime of disloyalty to the Sovereign. ... An ex post facto law (from the Latin for from something done afterward) or retroactive law (or retrospective law) is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences of acts committed or the legal status of facts and relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law. ... 1870 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...

Corruption of Blood also relates to one of the consquences of being impeached in early English law. If one was impeached from office, the person's family and decendants could have their titles and/or property taken away from them. Depiction of the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, then President of the United States, in 1868. ...

Examples of cases where a person's property was subject to Attainder

• Thomas Cromwell
• http://www.constitution.org/eng/conpur029.htm Attainder of the Earl of Strafford