William H. Murphy Jr. (born April 22, 1943) [1] is an attorney and former judge in Baltimore, Maryland, now working as managing partner of Murphy, Falcon, Murphy law firm. An African-American, Murphy has been particularly associated with advocacy for civil rights; he has also been prominent in local politics over several decades. [2]
Murphy was one of five children born to William H. Murphy Sr., one of the first African-American judges to serve on Baltimore's district court, and community and political activist Madeline Wheeler Murphy. [2] [3] [4] They grew up in Baltimore's Cherry Hill neighborhood. Murphy attended Baltimore City Public Schools, graduating from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute high school. In 1965, he completed a B.S. in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before going on to the University of Maryland School of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review and earned his J.D. in 1969. [5] [6]
From the beginning of his career, Murphy was especially active as an advocate in civil rights-related cases. [2] In his first successful case, he defended the First Amendment rights of a controversial Black Panther Party newspaper. Murphy gained particular public prominence as a criminal defense lawyer, in which role he drew public attention to the history of injustice toward African-Americans. [7] [8]
In 1980, Murphy was elected to Baltimore's Circuit Court (Maryland's highest-level trial court), on which he served as a judge for two and a half years. [2] [9] He resigned in 1983 to pursue an unsuccessful primary challenge to incumbent Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer in that year's mayoral election. [10] In his campaign, he spoke of an "other Baltimore" which, he said, had been neglected by those focused on improving the city's public image, leaving it without the investment of resources that could help to address its long-term problems. [11]
Murphy then returned to practicing law, mostly handling criminal cases. In 1993, he formed a partnership with Cristina Gutierrez. The new firm, Murphy and Gutierrez continued to handle criminal cases. After Gutierrez left the firm to establish her own firm Murphy then collaborated with his long time associate Richard Falcon to found the firm Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, in which Murphy continues to serve as a senior partner. [7] Here, his practice has focused on civil litigation, including several high-profile cases representing Fortune 500 companies. [2] In 1994, The Baltimore Sun described Murphy as having "a reputation for pushing client advocacy to its legal limits", in an article in which Murphy explained his role as preventing "the rules [from being] bent against unpopular people." [12] Murphy's work has earned numerous honors, including recognition as the "Top Attorney in Maryland" by Baltimore Magazine Super Lawyers, for both 2009 and 2010, and listing among the American Trial Lawyers Association's "100 Top Trial Lawyers in the U.S.", in 2011. [7] In 2004, the University of Baltimore presented Murphy with its inaugural Charles Hamilton Houston Award for Lifetime Achievement in Litigation. [6]
Murphy appeared as himself in The Wire, season 5, episode 7: "Took" (airdate February 17, 2008). [13]
In 2015, Murphy served as attorney for the family of Freddie Gray, who died during an encounter with the Baltimore police. [14] [15] [16] Murphy has long been critical of the ways law-enforcement practices can unfairly harm African-Americans. [10] Even in 1999, Murphy denounced "zero tolerance" as an approach to policing and advocated requiring police officers to carry "audiotape recorders" as a means of improving courtesy and making officers "less inclined to commit perjury." [17] [18]
Murphy's ties to Marilyn Mosby, the State's Attorney who filed charges against the officers involved in the Gray case, became a source of controversy when defense attorneys alleged, in a motion to dismiss the case, that those ties constituted a conflict of interest on her part. [19] (The motion also alleged several other potential reasons for dismissal.) Specifically, Murphy donated to Mosby's campaign, served as one of 14 members of her transition team, and represented her in an Attorney Grievance Commission proceeding, which the State's Attorney's office characterized as "frivolous." [20] The Fraternal Order of Police also publicly called for Mosby to recuse herself from the case. [21] In response, the prosecution asserted that none of the reasons alleged constitute a legal basis for charges to be dismissed; they also pointed out that "Murphy's $4,000 contribution to Mosby's campaign" amounted to "just 1.3 percent of her overall campaign funds" and was comparable to a $3,250 donation by the "Fraternal Order of Police, the union that represents Baltimore police officers." [20] Throughout the controversy, Murphy defended Mosby and asserted that there would be no conflict of interest. [22] philanthropy
In January, 2024, Murphy donated $1 million to the University of Maryland school of law, his alma mater. The school of law announced that the funds would be invested in the new Gibson-Banks Center for Race and the Law. The Center's goal: improving the lives of those affected by historical, systemic and current racial oppression. [23]
In United States law, depraved-heart murder, also known as depraved-indifference murder, is a type of murder where an individual acts with a "depraved indifference" to human life and where such act results in a death, despite that individual not explicitly intending to kill. In a depraved-heart murder, defendants commit an act even though they know their act runs an unusually high risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to a person. If the risk of death or bodily harm is great enough, ignoring it demonstrates a "depraved indifference" to human life and the resulting death is considered to have been committed with malice aforethought. In some states, depraved-heart killings constitute second-degree murder, while in others, the act would be charged with "wanton murder", varying degrees of manslaughter, or third-degree murder.
Kirkland & Ellis LLP is an American multinational law firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1909, Kirkland & Ellis is the largest law firm in the world by revenue and the seventh-largest by number of attorneys, and was the first law firm in the world to reach US$4 billion in annual revenue.
The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) is the municipal police department of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. Dating back to 1784, the BPD, consisting of 2,935 employees in 2020, is organized into nine districts covering 80.9 square miles (210 km2) of land and 11.1 square miles (29 km2) of waterways. The department is sometimes referred to as the Baltimore City Police Department to distinguish it from the Baltimore County Police Department.
William A. King and Antonio L. Murray are two former Baltimore Police Department officers sentenced to a total of 454 years in prison after an FBI investigation in 2005. The conviction of King and Murray resulted from the Baltimore-based Stop Snitchin' campaign in which the two officers were identified on videotape for being involved in drug dealing. Ironically, the case received help from drug dealers, who testified that the two officers were involved in the use of robbery, extortion, and excessive force against various dealers as a means of reselling the drugs for profit on the street. Former police commissioner Leonard Hamm said that "justice was served", and that "People like William King have no place in the Baltimore City Police Department, and never will".
Stephen Howard Sachs was an American lawyer and politician in the state of Maryland. He served as the Attorney General of Maryland from 1979 to 1987. He was noted for prosecuting the Catonsville Nine in 1968.
The American city of Baltimore, Maryland, is notorious for its crime rate, which ranks well above the national average. Violent crime spiked in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015, which touched off riots and an increase in murders. The city recorded 348 homicides in 2019, a number second only to the number recorded in 1993 when the population was nearly 125,000 higher.
Hae Min Lee was a Korean-American high school student who went missing on January 13, 1999, in Baltimore County, Maryland, before turning up dead on February 9, 1999, when her corpse was discovered in Leakin Park, Baltimore. Her autopsy revealed that she had been killed by way of manual strangulation.
On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., a 25-year-old African American, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department for possession of a knife. While in police custody, Gray sustained fatal injuries and was taken to the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. Gray died on April 19, 2015; his death was ascribed to injuries to his cervical spinal cord.
On April 12, 2015, Baltimore Police Department officers arrested Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American resident of Baltimore, Maryland. Gray's neck and spine were injured while he was in a police vehicle and he went into a coma. On April 18, there were protests in front of the Western district police station. Gray died on April 19.
Marilyn Mosby is an American politician and lawyer who served as the State's Attorney for Baltimore from 2015 to 2023. Mosby gained national attention following the killing of Freddie Gray in 2015, after which she led a highly publicized investigation and unsuccessful murder prosecution of the police officers who arrested and transported Gray.
Nicholas James Mosby is an American politician from Baltimore, Maryland. He is the current President of the Baltimore City Council. First elected to serve on the City Council from 2011 to 2016, Mosby was subsequently appointed in 2017 to the Maryland House of Delegates, representing Baltimore City's 40th District. He was elected as Baltimore City Council President in November 2020, assuming the role in December of that year. Mosby ran for a second term in 2024, but was defeated in the Democratic primary by city councilmember Zeke Cohen.
The 2016 Baltimore mayoral election was held November 8, 2016 concurrent with the General Election. Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the incumbent mayor, did not run for reelection. Catherine Pugh won the election on November 8, 2016, with 57% of the popular vote, and took office on December 6, 2016.
Maria Cristina Gutierrez was an American criminal defense attorney based in Baltimore, Maryland, who represented several high-profile defendants in the 1990s. She was the first Latina to be counsel of record in a case before the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2001, Gutierrez was disbarred, with her consent, following multiple complaints from clients who paid her for legal work she failed to perform. At the time, Gutierrez was dying from a combination of multiple sclerosis and diabetes, and her health was rapidly deteriorating.
Thiruvendran "Thiru" Vignarajah is an American lawyer and politician. He previously was Deputy Attorney General of Maryland. He is a litigation partner at the law firm DLA Piper in Baltimore. He has also been the lead attorney for the State of Maryland in the post-conviction appeals of Adnan Syed, who was wrongfully convicted of murder in the high-profile 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee. He is a four-time candidate for Baltimore State's Attorney and mayor of Baltimore, having run for both positions twice and being defeated in the primary each time.
On July 18, 2013, Tyrone West, a 44-year-old African American male, was pursued by two officers of the Baltimore Police Department after he fled a traffic stop during which cocaine was allegedly found. The cocaine later went missing in police possession after a subpoena was issued. West was on parole at the time of this incident with an extensive criminal record including assault, resisting arrest, and attempted first-degree murder. West ultimately died during the scuffle with police and various medical experts have given conflicting assessments of contributing factors including cardiac arrhythmia, dehydration, positional asphyxia, and extreme environmental temperatures.
Alan Scott Bolden is an American attorney, law partner, and former radio and television host. He is currently a television and radio legal and political commentator, and as an attorney, continues to represent the interests of several nonprofits, including the United Negro College Fund, the Greater Washington Urban League, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
C. Justin Brown is an American criminal defense attorney based in Baltimore, Maryland. He runs a law firm called Brown Law. He formerly represented Adnan Syed, who was convicted of murder in the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee and was the subject of the first season of the podcast Serial in 2014.
The 2020 Baltimore mayoral election was held on November 3, 2020, concurrent with the general election. Baltimore City Council President Brandon Scott, the Democratic Party nominee, won a sizable victory over independent candidate Bob Wallace, Republican Party nominee Shannon Wright, and Working Class Party nominee David Harding.
Ivan Jules Bates is an American politician and lawyer who has served as the State's Attorney of Baltimore since 2023.
Malcolm Peter Ruff is an American politician and attorney who has served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from District 41 since 2023.