catch red-handed

Yet despite high-profile prosecutions of a handful of galgueros who threw their dogs down wells, the perpetrators of the vast majority of galgo killings or abandonings never get punished because they’re hard to catch red-handed.

Then last of all Elmer thought of Jem Shock, the slippery customer whom no warden had thus far been able to catch red-handed, breaking the game laws; and who, it seemed, had gained an unenviable reputation for boldness as well as knavery, so that his name, bandied about from lip to lip, had gradually become a synonym for everything that was bad, whether the fellow deserved it or not.

“And so, because they are so known among the village people here, you are prosecuting this campaign against a man whom you hope to catch red-handed.”

A general idea, however, that half-past ten would make quite a long enough day for such work made me hope to be in time to frustrate or perchance to catch red-handed this clever miscreant.