Get Out of Jail Free card

An original Get Out of Jail Free Chance card.

A Get Out of Jail Free card is an element of the board game Monopoly which has become a popular metaphor for something that will get one out of an undesired situation.

Use in the game

In the game, the card is one of the Community Chest and Chance cards, and is one of the ways a player can get out of jail. Typically the Community Chest card shows a drawing of the Rich Uncle Pennybags character being released from a bird cage, and the Chance card shows him being booted out of a cell in striped uniform. The card reads:

THIS CARD MAY BE KEPT
UNTIL NEEDED OR SOLD

GET OUT OF JAIL
FREE

In law

• In 1967, James Robert Ringrose, one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, presented a Get Out of Jail Free card to FBI agents after he was arrested.
• In the U.S. Supreme Court case Hudson v. Michigan (2006), the Court ruled that use of evidence against a defendant obtained through search warrants in instances that the police failed to knock-and-announce does not violate the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The majority opinion by Justice Scalia notes that suppressing evidence in such instances would amount "in many cases to a get-out-of-jail-free card."

See also

• Immunity (reality television)