By: Kristi Tousignant
WBAL-TV 11 News reported Tuesday that Baltimore Sun reporter Tricia Bishop passed out during the trial of the Werdesheim brothers this morning and that one of the defendants went to her aid.
Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim, Orthodox Jewish and white, are accused of beating a black teen in an Baltimore neighborhood while Eliyahu was patrolling for an Orthodox Jewish watch group.
WBAL reporter Lowell Melser tweeted that Avi jumped out of his seat to administer aid when Bishop passed out. Bishop was OK when she was led out of the Mitchell Courthouse by emergency workers, according to Melser.
The trial has been going on since last week and has been drawing national attention due to its similarities to the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, where a black teen was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch patrolman.
By: Kristi Tousignant
A Maine lawyer is convinced a former client is a serial killer and is now trying to link him to a series of murders.
Eric B. Cote represented Rory Holland from 2008 to 2009 in a real estate partition action. After Cote and Holland went their separate ways, Holland was convicted of killing brothers Derek and Gage Greene later in 2009.
Afterwards, Cote extensively investigated Holland and dug up old missing persons records trying to connect them to Holland. He is even convinced that one person has been wrongly convicted of a crime Holland committed.
For those of you who have seen “The Lincoln Lawyer” (anyone?) starring the one and only Matthew McConaughey — possibly the most unconvincing lawyer of all time — you know that Cote’s story is almost a scene straight out of the movie.
Just like Cote, McConaughey is representing a client who turns out to be a serial killer and is actually responsible for the murder one of McConaughey’s former clients went to prison for. (Although most of the movie is lots of action and chases and shooting and McConaughey making confused faces as his lawyer character unravels the truth.)
A few weeks ago, a judge said Cote had become “obsessed with the background and history of Mr. Holland.” Cote was then reprimanded by the court for using confidential information he had gained from Holland while representing him in later actions against Holland. (Cote had represented the Greene brothers’ mother, Tammy Cole, in an unlawful death action against Holland.)
While that doesn’t have the same glossy, adrenaline-pumped Hollywood ending, at least Cote seems to have a blemish-free record, with no disciplinary action against him in his 35 years of practicing law.
The same can maybe not be said for McConaughey’s acting track record.
By: Robert J. Terry
Turns out powerful New York City trial attorneys can be as superstitious as baseball players.
That’s the takeaway from this New York Times article juxtaposing their reasoned, analytical grounding with a penchant for eating the same meal every day, not getting a haircut during a trial and using the same door to enter and exit the Manhattan courthouse.
“It’s part of the human condition that no matter how many years of education you’ve had, you still have faith in certain totems,” Arthur R. Miller, a law professor at New York University, tells the Times. “I won’t go to court without a three-piece suit and without a red tie, and without a red pocket square.”
One lawyer who’s represented organized crime figures says he gives $20 to any homeless person who asks when he’s working a trial.
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