Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

At the start of 2023, specifically in the January 9th and 10th, I wrote here that there were five major and dramatic trials scheduled for the year. And 2023 was in fact a dramatic reckoning for lovers of litigation.  Let us block this out a bit. 1) I wrote first about the Alex Murdaugh case.  That one took place soon thereafter.  The prominent South Carolina lawyer was convicted of murdering his wife Maggie and his son Paul.  Alex M. is in prison and the inevitable appeal is underway... 2) I spoke, too, about the forthcoming trial of Robert Telles, a former public official in Nevada suspected of the murder of Jeff German, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.  Evidentiary disputes have delayed matters on this one, and it is now scheduled for April 2024.  3) Thirdly, there was Sam Bankman-Fried, a colossus in the cryptocurrency world at the time, now (given the guilty verdict in his trial for wire fraud and related matters) just a guy in the Brooklyn ...

The first of the five dramatic 2023 trials I highlighted for you, dear reader, as this year began is now well underway: Alex Murdaugh is on trial for a double murder and related crimes. As as true of many criminal trials, this one began with testimony from the police crime-scene investigators: the types whose jobs are glamorized in the CSI shows. The real-world ones make it seem less than glamorous. Indeed, the word used in wire services dispatches for the testimony of agent Melinda Worley, of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, has been "tedious."    At one point while testifying, Worley removed the sneakers of one of the victims, Paul Murdaugh, from a box and showed them to the jury. They were unremarkable New Balance shoes. This is all a matter of making a case -- I presume that eventually someone will testify that tread marks at the scene were distinctively New Balance.  But it is presumably not necessary to rely on sneakers to show that Paul Murdaugh was at ...

 The year just begun should be a great one for fans of reality courtroom dramas.  Today and tomorrow I hope to discuss five possible judicial spectacles of 2023, arranged in (increasing) order of political salience.  FIRST: the Murdaugh murder trial. Alex Murdaugh is a prominent member of the tort plaintiffs' bar (and a defense-oriented tort law reform group has called South Carolina a "judicial hellhole for defendants") -- the Murdaugh family has powerfully benefitted from a permissive attitude toward forum shopping by the bench in that state.  In February 2019 one of Alex's sons, Paul Murdaugh, recklessly piloting a boat, caused the death of his friend Mallory Beach. The Beach family, in a civil lawsuit, claimed that Alex and Paul's older brother, Buster, were negligent and responsible for the death of their daughter in providing Paul with alcohol prior to the accident.  Fortunately for the Beach family, the state has lots of other tort lawyers. The litigation...