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The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial. The term was first recorded in the 1930s^[1]. There is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant and that the actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as an impressive example and as a warning. Show trials tend to be retributive rather than correctional justice.

Such trials can exhibit scant regard for the niceties of jurisprudence and even for the letter of the law. Defendants have little real opportunity to justify themselves: they have often signed statements under duress and/or suffered torture prior to appearing in the court-room.

Show trials were a significant part of Joseph Stalin's regime. The Moscow Trials of the Great Purge period in the Soviet Union are characteristic. The authorities not only pre-determined the guilt of the defendants, but also orchestrated the whole trial processes. Massive campaigns in newspapers and at numerous meetings shaped the opinion of the public towards the cases.

The authorities staged the actual trials meticulously. If defendants refused to "cooperate", i.e., to admit guilt for their alleged and mostly fabricated crimes, they did not go on public trial, but suffered execution nonetheless. This happened, for example during the prosecution of the so-called "Labour Peasant Party" (Трудовая Крестьянская Партия), a party invented by NKVD, which, in particular, assigned the notable economist Alexander Chayanov to it.

The first solid public evidence of what really happened during the Moscow Trials came to the West through the Dewey Commission. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, more information became available. This discredited Walter Duranty, who claimed that these trials were actually fair.

British jurist F.J.P. Veale implied, in his book "Advance to Barbarism" that the 1946 Nuremberg Trials of Nazi leaders amounted to a form of show trial, as the judgments were not rendered by a disinterested party, which is a key element of independent judicial integrity. Others have disputed this characterization, noting that the forms of due process were observed and that some of the Nuremberg defendants were acquitted or were convicted of lesser charges than desired by the prosecution.

• Trial of Charles I of England or High Court of Justice for the trial of Charles I
• Trial of the Gang of Four
• Jan Hus trial
• Kangaroo court: A sham legal proceeding.
• László Rajk, a show trial under Hungary's communist regime
• Execution of Louis XVI of France
• Nicolae Ceauşescu trial
• NKVD Troika.
• Nuremberg Trials
• Secret trial: A trial not open to the public.
• Witch hunt, hunting down people of a certain race/trait/profession/political conviction for being/doing something sinful.