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Jilliane Hoffman is an American writer of legal thrillers. She was born on Long Island and attended both undergraduate and law school at St. John's University in Queens, New York.
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Jilliane Hoffman is an American writer of legal thrillers. She was born on Long Island and attended both undergraduate and law school at St. John's University in Queens, New York.
Before starting to write, Hoffman experienced the true life of a lawyer while working as an assistant state's attorney prosecuting felonies in Miami, Florida [1] from 1992 to 1996. From 1996 to 2001, she was a regional advisor for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement consulting with special agents in complicated investigations including homicide, narcotics and organized crime.
With the knowledge obtained through years of work as a lawyer, Hoffman turned to writing legal/crime thrillers. Her first novel, Retribution , was published in 2004, followed by Last Witness in 2005. Her third book, Plea of Insanity , (originally scheduled for release in March 2007) was released in Europe in July 2008 and has been available in North America since April 2009.
She lives in South Florida with her husband and two children.
An Alford plea, in United States law, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence. In entering an Alford plea, the defendant admits that the evidence presented by the prosecution would be likely to persuade a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to an episodic or persistent psychiatric disease at the time of the criminal act. This is contrasted with an excuse of provocation, in which the defendant is responsible, but the responsibility is lessened due to a temporary mental state. It is also contrasted with a finding that a defendant cannot stand trial in a criminal case because a mental disease prevents them from effectively assisting counsel, from a civil finding in trusts and estates where a will is nullified because it was made when a mental disorder prevented a testator from recognizing the natural objects of their bounty, and from involuntary civil commitment to a mental institution, when anyone is found to be gravely disabled or to be a danger to themselves or to others.
John Ray Grisham Jr. is an American novelist and attorney, best known for his popular legal thrillers. His books have been translated into 42 languages and published worldwide.
A legal drama, or a courtroom drama, is a genre of film and television that generally focuses on narratives regarding legal practice and the justice system. The American Film Institute (AFI) defines "courtroom drama" as a genre of film in which a system of justice plays a critical role in the film's narrative. Legal dramas have also followed the lives of the fictional attorneys, defendants, plaintiffs, or other persons related to the practice of law present in television show or film. Legal drama is distinct from police crime drama or detective fiction, which typically focus on police officers or detectives investigating and solving crimes. The focal point of legal dramas, more often, are events occurring within a courtroom, but may include any phases of legal procedure, such as jury deliberations or work done at law firms. Some legal dramas fictionalize real cases that have been litigated, such as the play-turned-movie, Inherit the Wind, which fictionalized the Scopes Monkey Trial. As a genre, the term "legal drama" is typically applied to television shows and films, whereas legal thrillers typically refer to novels and plays.
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series created by Dick Wolf and produced by Wolf Entertainment, launching the Law & Order franchise. Airing its entire run on NBC, Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990 and completed its twentieth and final season on May 24, 2010.
José Padilla, also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir or Muhajir Abdullah, is a United States citizen who was convicted in a federal court of aiding terrorists.
Andrea Pia Yates is a former resident of Houston, Texas, who confessed to drowning her five children in their bathtub on June 20, 2001. She had been suffering for some time from severe postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis and schizophrenia. During her trial, she was represented by Houston criminal defense attorney George Parnham. Chuck Rosenthal, the district attorney in Harris County, asked for the death penalty in her 2002 trial. Her case placed the M'Naghten rules, along with the irresistible impulse test, a legal test for sanity, under close public scrutiny in the United States. She was convicted of capital murder, but the jury refused the death penalty option. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. The verdict was overturned on appeal, in light of false testimony by one of the expert psychiatric witnesses.
The legal thriller genre is a type of crime fiction genre that focuses on the preceding of the investigation, with particular reference to the impacts on courtroom proceedings and the lives of characters.
Karla Leanne Homolka, also known as Leanne Teale, is a Canadian serial killer and rapist who, with her first husband Paul Bernardo, raped and murdered at least three minors between 1990 and 1992. Homolka attracted worldwide media attention when she was convicted of manslaughter following a plea bargain to serve only twelve years in the rape-murders of two Ontario teenage girls, Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, as well as the rape and death of her own sister, Tammy Homolka. She was never charged with sexual assault despite the evidence due to her plea bargain. Bernardo was convicted of the Mahaffy-French murders and received life imprisonment and a dangerous offender designation, the full maximum sentence allowed in Canada.
Murder One is an American legal drama television series that first aired on the ABC network in the United States in 1995. The series was created by Steven Bochco, Charles H. Eglee, and Channing Gibson.
Just Legal is an American courtroom drama television series that stars Don Johnson and Jay Baruchel as two courtroom lawyers in Venice, California. The series premiered on The WB on September 19, 2005, and was canceled on October 3, 2005, after three episodes had been aired. Almost a year later The WB burned off five additional episodes following a repeat of the pilot on August 6, 2006. The series concluded on September 10, 2006. This is the last show to air on The WB, before UPN merged into The CW.
Paul J. Levine is an American author of crime fiction, particularly legal thrillers. Levine has written 22 mystery novels which include two series of books known by the names of the protagonists. The Jake Lassiter series follows the former football player turned Miami lawyer in a series of fourteen books published over a thirty-year span beginning in 1990. The four-book Solomon vs. Lord series published in the mid 2000s features Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, a pair of bickering Miami attorneys who were rivals before they became law partners and lovers. Levine has also written four stand-alone novels and 20 episodes of the television drama series JAG. With JAG executive producer Don Bellisario, he also created and produced First Monday, a 2002 CBS series inspired by one of Levine's novels.
Edna Buchanan is an American journalist and writer best known for her crime mystery novels. She won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting "for her versatile and consistently excellent police beat reporting."
Liborio Salvatore Bellomo is an American mobster and boss of the Genovese crime family. He served in the 116th Street Crew of Saverio "Sammy Black" Santora and was initiated in 1977. His father was a soldier and close to Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno. In 1990, Kenneth McCabe, then-organized crime investigator for the United States attorney's office in Manhattan, identified Bellomo as "acting boss" of the crime family following the indictment of Vincent Gigante in the "Windows Case". In June 1996, Bellomo was indicted on charges of extortion, labor racketeering and for ordering the deaths of Ralph DeSimone in 1991 and Antonio DiLorenzo in 1988; DeSimone was found shot 5 times in the trunk of his car at LaGuardia Airport and DiLorenzo was shot and killed in the backyard of his home. Since around 2016, Bellomo was recognised, most likely, to be official boss of the Genovese family.
James Grippando is an American novelist and lawyer best known as the 2017 winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction.
Ellis S. Rubin was an American attorney who gained national fame for handling a variety of highly publicized cases in a legal career that spanned 53 years. He was famous for his innovative defenses and his propensity for handling lost causes. Rubin won the first case in Florida using the “battered woman” defense. He also worked to free a man, James Joseph Richardson, who had been wrongly imprisoned for 21 years for fatally poisoning his seven children, and created the nymphomania defense in a case involving prostitution.
The Country Walk case is a Florida 1985 "Multi-Victim, Multi-Offender" child sex abuse case that occurred during the day-care sex-abuse hysteria. As of 2020 Frank Fuster remains imprisoned, making him allegedly the last perpetrator in this moral panic. His wife Ileana Flores Fuster initially denied any wrongdoing, but following months of interrogations, she testified against Frank and confessed to the alleged crimes, later recanting her confession, then recanting her recantation, and finally recanting that. This case became known because it seemed to have better evidence than other ritual abuse cases, but scientific findings since Fuster's conviction have challenged the evidence. The case, prosecuted by Janet Reno, was profiled in the 2002 Frontline episode "Did Daddy Do It?"
Scott J. Silverman is an American lawyer and judge on Florida's 11th Judicial Circuit.
The Schenecker double homicide occurred on January 27, 2011; 16-year-old Calyx and 13-year-old Beau Schenecker were found dead by police at their home in Tampa, Florida. Their mother, Julie Powers Schenecker, was arrested on suspicion of their murder after an alleged confession.
Virginia Louise Giuffre is an American-Australian campaigner to support sex trafficking victims. She is a prominent and public victim of the sex trafficking ring of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She created Victims Refuse Silence, a non-profit based in the United States in 2015 and was prominently interviewed by American and British reporters about her alleged experiences of being trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
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