public service murder
n.— «A Prince William County jury says Justin Michael Wolfe, the 20-year-old drug dealer who hired his high school buddy to assassinate his marijuana distributor, should die for his crime. The judge has not yet ruled. Prosecutors like to call this sort of killing a “public service murder.”» —“Putting Justice To the Test, With Puzzling Results” by Marc Fisher Washington Post Jan. 29, 2002. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Is it just desserts or just deserts? Gina from Harvest, Alabama, says that when using this phrase, she’d always pictured dessert, as in “the treat someone deserves,” but the correct term is indeed just deserts. This particular desert isn’t an arid...
Novelist Charles Dickens and the musician Prince were very different types of artists, but they also had a lot in common. A new book chronicling their extraordinary careers becomes a larger meditation on perfectionism and creativity itself. Plus...