In theUnited States criminal law, aframe-up (frameup) orsetup is the act of falselyimplicating (framing) someone in a crime by providingfabricated evidence ortestimony.^[1] In British usage, toframe, orstitch up, is to maliciously or dishonestly incriminate someone or set them up, in the sense trap or ensnare.

Whileincriminating those who are innocent might be done out of sheer malice,framing is primarily used as adistraction. Generally, 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 arounddue 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 may useconspiracy theories to hide the true crimes of the accused.^{[citation needed]}

Frameups in labor disputes sometimes swing public opinion one way or the other. In Massachusetts, during the1912 Lawrence Textile Strike,Massachusetts State Police officers acting on a tip discovered dynamite and blamed it on theIndustrial Workers of the World 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 IWW.^[2]

A frameup where a police officer shoots an unarmed suspect and then places a weapon near the body is a form ofpolice misconduct known as a "throw down". This is used to justify the shooting by making it appear that the officer fired in self-defence or to defend other bystanders.^[3]

• Dreyfus affair (around 1900), in which a Jewish soldier of theFrench Army was framed for treason and sent to Devil's Island before being exonerated.
• Carl Ingold Jacobson,Los Angeles City Council member, framed on a morals charge in 1927.
• Arthur Allan Thomas, New Zealand farmer convicted of the 1970Crewe murders inPukekawa,Waikato, and later acquitted after it was found police had planted evidence at the crime scene.
• László Rajk, aHungarian Communist Party politician accused of being a "Titoist spy"c. 1949. The injustice of this trial helped to trigger theHungarian Revolution of 1956 against the communistHungarian People's Republic.
• Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam, two members of theNation of Islam who were falsely convicted for involvement in theassassination of Malcolm X in 1965. They were exonerated in 2021 after an investigation by New York County District AttorneyCyrus Vance Jr. in response to the 2020Netflix specialWho Killed Malcolm X?
• Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic and expert onIslamic studies, was framed and imprisoned inIran from 2018 to 2020, on a charge of what is thought to beespionage.
• Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan politician, and the former manager of theHôtel des Mille Collines inKigali during a period in which it housed 1,268Hutu andTutsi refugees from theInterahamwe militia during theRwandan genocide;^[4] as a result, none of these refugees were hurt or killed during the attacks.^[5] He was framed and arrested byPaul Kagame'sRwandan Patriotic Front government in 2020, on charges ofterrorism,arson,kidnap and "murder perpetrated against unarmed, innocent Rwandan civilians on Rwandan territory" for his involvement with the oppositionPDR-Ihumure.^[6]

• False flag
• Framing (social sciences)
• Identity theft
• Joe job
• Kangaroo court
• Miscarriage of justice
• Presumption of guilt
• Perverting the course of justice
• Scapegoat
• Show trial

•   Media related toFrameups at Wikimedia Commons
•   The dictionary definition offrame up at Wiktionary
•   The dictionary definition ofstitch up at Wiktionary