Justice Overdue: Reinvestigating the Murder of Malcolm X
John Adams and the Art of Persuasion
Dewey Bozella on His Wrongful Conviction
Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 248: Listen and Learn -- Introduction to Homicide
Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down three decisions on a Thursday, each of them substantively important to the individuals involved, but all of them essentially involving the Supreme Court’s instructing lower...more
Homicide means the act of one person killing another. Murder, on the other hand, is when someone unlawfully kills another person with the intention to harm beforehand. So, homicide is like the big category that covers...more
Most readers of this blog rarely, if ever, become involved in homicide cases. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s essentially unanimous decision in McElrath v. Georgia should be of interest because it deals with the issue of...more
Every legal dispute confronts the rules of evidence. Can a person’s past, specifically uncharged bad acts, be used as evidence in elder abuse lawsuits? A recent court ruling addressed this very question. The case stands out...more
Capital murder designates a specific type of homicide that may be punishable by the death penalty. But, it no longer exists in the state of Colorado. This change in the legal landscape is a significant development, and...more
Kittie started dating her daughter’s boyfriend Butch when he was 17 years old. They apparently dated for over twenty years, during which time Kittie purchased him a house to “use.” Butch later moved into the house with his...more
Summary - The Nevada Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s order allowing police and district attorneys to search through assertedly privileged newsgathering material on seized electronic devices of murdered Las Vegas...more
In the last few years, I have been fortunate to have attorneys and their clients trust me as their mediator in a significant number of high-exposure negligent security cases. Negligent security cases can offer a variety of...more
Summary - In People v. Reid and People v. Muhammad, the New York Court of Appeals overturned murder convictions due to violations of defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to open courtrooms. In both cases, the trial courts had...more
While the United States has seen a decrease in murder rates in 2022, homicide still remains a grim reality, ranking as the third leading cause of death in the country, according to a CDC report. Shockingly, it is also the...more
In late February of 1965, Malcolm X was murdered at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York. In the days after the famous civil rights leader’s assassination, three men were arrested and charged with his murder. All three...more
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States issued three decisions: Bartenwerfer v. Buckley, No. 21-908: This case analyzed the U.S. Bankruptcy Code’s prohibition of the discharge of debts that were incurred through...more
In October 2014, Sarah Koenig debuted her popular podcast, “Serial.” The podcast discussed the prosecution of Adnan Syed, who was accused of murdering Hae Min Lee, a high-school senior that vanished after school in 1999....more
2022 marks 40 years since Vincent Chin’s brutal murder. The legal injustice that ensued from Chin’s death compelled the Asian American community into action and served as the impetus for Asian American activism. ...more
United States v. Tsarnaev, No. 20-443: This case concerns the death penalty imposed on one of the two brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who planted and detonated bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding...more
Hemphill v. New York, Nos. 20-637: In this case, Darrell Hemphill successfully challenged his conviction for the murder of a 2-year-old child killed by a stray bullet in 2006, arguing that the State's presentation of the...more
This episode profiles Dewey Bozella, a former professional boxer and WilmerHale client who spent 26 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Bozella is interviewed by WilmerHale Partner Ross Firsenbaum and former...more
For those of us who get the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, it is a newspaper of respite. Yes, all of Friday’s news is there but the features are sections on what books to read and what piece of 16th century art or...more
January 6, 2021, is likely to have a long section in the indices of history books for some time to come. Those of us who fight to uphold press freedom will view it not only as a day that imperiled our legislators and our...more
There is one question that is particularly important in the context of current high-profile jury trials in the midst of the continuing pandemic, but the question really applies to all trials: Why would we gather large numbers...more
David Baker, Lisa Linsky and Margaret Sanne will discuss slayer statutes and wrongful death as civil murder statutes make certain crime doesn’t pay....more
Precedential Opinions of Note - Evidence from Outside Limitations Period Permissible to Prove Ongoing Scheme to Defraud - United States v. James (April 3, 2020), No. 19-1250...more
Last week, the Illinois Appellate Court issued three separate opinions addressing the scope of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The opinions provide additional guidance related to what constitutes a reasonable...more
The Murder of George Floyd on May 25th by a white Minneapolis police officer did not happen in a vacuum. It was not an aberration in an “otherwise functioning” justice system. Countless black men and women in America have...more
Welcome back to the Law School Toolbox podcast! This is another episode in our "Listen and Learn" series, where we review legal concepts and apply them to fact patterns. Today, we're talking about homicide. In this episode...more