Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I'm happy to see that a certain trial in Nevada has come to a conclusion whereby a smug  and  privileged murderer is going to get what is coming to him.   As August ended a jury found Robert Telles guilty of the murder of Jeff German, a reporter for the Las  Vegas  Review-Journal. His beat for the paper had entailed organized crime and political corruption.    Telles stabbed German to death outside of his home in early September 2022. German's editor, Glenn  Cook, gave a wonderful interview after German's body was found, describing the deceased. Cook said  "you could tell" when he was about to break a big story, "he had almost this kind of grouchy streak and  if he was walking around the newsroom with a furrow in his forehead, you knew something big was up and that he was close." Telles was the object of some of German's stories, as Clark County Public Administrator. He was about  to feature in another such story at the time of...

  Interesting twist. Who dunnit?  "Telles has claimed that a local real estate company, Compass Realty & Management,  framed him for German’s  killing . The firm has denied the accusation and has said it is looking into potential legal action against Telles." I'm afraid Compass Realty is out of luck there. There is an absolute immunity from defamation liability for statements made in a judicial proceeding. It is one of the little protections lawyers build into the law for themselves.  Of course he had to come up with something. Authorities say that Robert Telles, formerly the Clark County public administrator, stabbed and killed Jeff German in September 2022.   Telles has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. The motive, as per prosecutors, stemmed from unflattering articles German had written about Telles’ conduct as a public official. I don't see that Telles alleges that German either had written or was working on ANY negative story about Comp...

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 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...