Malar Balasubramanian (November 15, 1976 - February 15, 2017) was an American pediatrician who pleaded guilty on January 30, 2006 to a charge of involuntary manslaughter of her mother and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Malar Balasubramanian graduated from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland in 2001 and completed a pediatric residency program at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh in June, 2004. She practiced medicine in India for a time before returning to her home in the Blue Ash suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio two or three weeks prior to her mother's homicide. She was planning to move to St. Louis to begin a fellowship in pediatric cardiology.
On July 27, 2005, Malar Balasubramaniam's brother and sister received an email from her. Parts of this email read, "Once I realized that I won't succeed the way I wanted to in life and decided to end it, I realized that I couldn't leave you two alone with Amma" ("Amma" means "mother") and "I'm sorry for what I did to Amma, I am, but I'm glad she's not here to hurt us anymore."
She told police she wanted to kill herself, but did not want to leave her mother behind to harm her brother and sister. She also told police she left a six-page letter in the car that explained why she killed her mother.
She was indicted Friday, July 29, 2005 on one count of aggravated murder.
Malar Balasubramanian was arraigned on charges of aggravated murder before Hamilton County, Ohio Judge Dennis Helmick on August 8, 2005. She did not enter a plea, so Judge Helmick entered a "Not Guilty" plea for her. She was jailed without bond.
On Friday, September 16, 2005, Malar Balasubramanian changed her plea to "not guilty by reason of insanity". Lawyers representing Dr. Balasubramanian said the new plea was supported by evidence that suggested the then 28-year-old doctor was distraught, injured and under the influence of drugs. The evidence included an e-mail police believed Dr. Balasubramanian transmitted to her brother and sister near the time of their mother's death. In the message, she tells her siblings she did not want to leave them alone with their mother and that she was "very sorry to have done this to you." She also wrote that she had considered hurting herself many times and had finally decided she could not go on because she was a "second-rate" friend, sibling and doctor.
On Monday, January 30, 2006, Dr. Malar Balasubramanian changed her plea to guilty of a reduced charge of "involuntary manslaughter." She was sentenced to 10 years in jail by Judge Dennis Helmick. She was released on December 18, 2012 on judicial release. The judicial release kept her under the probation until the December 2017 however due to her good conduct she was given an early release from the probation.
On Wednesday, February 15, 2017, she was found in her apartment in Upper Manhattan where she had hanged herself.
Kenneth Thomas Richey, in Zeist, Netherlands is a British-US dual citizen who in 1987 was convicted in Ohio of murdering a two-year-old girl and sentenced to death. He spent 21 years on death row before re-examination of his case led to his release, after he accepted a plea bargain in which he pleaded no contest to manslaughter.
A school shooting occurred on November 8, 2005 at Campbell County Comprehensive High School in Jacksboro, Tennessee, United States, when a 15-year-old freshman student shot the school principal and two assistant principals. One assistant principal, Ken Bruce, died as a result of the shooting.
In the English law of homicide, manslaughter is a less serious offence than murder, the differential being between levels of fault based on the mens rea or by reason of a partial defence. In England and Wales, a common practice is to prefer a charge of murder, with the judge or defence able to introduce manslaughter as an option. The jury then decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of either murder or manslaughter. On conviction for manslaughter, sentencing is at the judge's discretion, whereas a sentence of life imprisonment is mandatory on conviction for murder. Manslaughter may be either voluntary or involuntary, depending on whether the accused has the required mens rea for murder.
Mary Carol Winkler is an American woman who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 2006 shooting of her husband, Matthew Winkler, the pulpit minister at the Fourth Street Church of Christ in the small town of Selmer, Tennessee.
Jay D. Scott was an American convicted murderer who was executed by the state of Ohio for the 1983 murder of a delicatessen owner in Cleveland. He was the second man put to death by Ohio since it reinstated capital punishment in 1981 and the first to be executed involuntarily. Scott's execution generated attention as he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, with his lawyers arguing he was too mentally ill to be executed.
John Parsons is a criminal from Chillicothe, Ohio. He escaped from prison and was caught on October 19, 2006. He was wanted for an unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, escape, aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, weapons under disability, tampering with evidence and grand theft.
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th century BC.
David Edward Maust was an American serial killer who targeted predominantly male teenagers age 13 to 19. His murders occurred in Germany and the United States. In 1984 he was sentenced to 35 years in prison; he was released under probation in June 1999. Once released and off of probation he continued murdering, leading to his final arrest and sentencing to three life terms without the possibility of parole.
Ruth Lyons was a pioneer radio and television broadcaster in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is said Ruth Lyons accidentally invented the daytime TV talk show. Like Arthur Godfrey and others of the era, Lyons built a TV empire.
Javaris Cortez Crittenton is an American former professional basketball player. During his four year career, Crittenton played for the Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies, and Washington Wizards of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Zhejiang Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association, and the Dakota Wizards of the NBA D-League. He was previously the starting point guard for the Georgia Tech men's basketball team.
Marcus Fiesel was an American 3-year-old child who was murdered in Clermont County, Ohio, in August 2006. Fiesel had recently been removed from his mother's care by child protective services, and placed into foster care with David and Liz Carroll in Union Township, where he died from hyperthermia after being restrained and neglected in a closet for a two-day period. On February 21, 2007, Liz Carroll was convicted of murdering him. On February 26, 2007, it was announced attorneys for David Carroll had reached a plea agreement.
Marie Dean Arrington was an American criminal. In 1969 she became the second woman to be placed on the list of FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.
Sean W. Kennedy was a gay American man who was severely punched by a younger man, Stephen Andrew Moller as Kennedy was leaving a bar in Greenville, South Carolina. The punch was so hard that it shattered his facial bones and separated his brain from his brain stem. Kennedy died 17 hours later of his fatal injuries. This attack and Kennedy's death drew attention to South Carolina's lack of a hate crime law and is believed to have contributed to passage of the federal Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009, for which his mother lobbied. Additionally, Moller served so little time "because of the lack of an applicable Violent Crime Law in South Carolina" at the time, according to the Judge, although this explanation was seen by the LGBT community as merely thinly veiled homophobia.
Anthony Kirkland is an American serial killer. Between 2006 and 2009, Kirkland murdered two women and two girls in the Cincinnati area, following a 16-year prison term for the 1987 killing of his girlfriend.
Barbara Rose Precht, previously known as Pearl Lady, was a woman who was found dead in the Ohio River in 2006; she remained unidentified until 2014. Precht's cause of death is unknown; it may have been an accident, suicide, or homicide. Her husband, James, was located and arrested after she was identified. He was charged with lying to police about his identity.
On June 14, 2015, sheriff's deputies in Greene County, Missouri, United States, found the body of Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard face down in the bedroom of her house just outside Springfield, lying on the bed in a pool of blood from stab wounds inflicted several days earlier. There was no sign of her daughter, Gypsy Rose, who, according to Blanchard, had chronic conditions including leukemia, asthma, and muscular dystrophy, and who had the "mental capacity of a 7-year-old due to brain damage" as the result of premature birth.
On October 12, 2012, Ryan Carter Poston, an American attorney from Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, was shot to death by his on-again off-again girlfriend Shayna Michelle Hubers. After a trial in the Campbell County circuit court, Hubers was convicted of murder on April 23, 2015. She was sentenced to 40 years in the Kentucky Department of Corrections on August 14, 2015, with parole eligibility after 34 years. On August 25, 2016, Hubers’s conviction was overturned on appeal when one of the jurors in her murder trial was revealed to be a convicted felon. Hubers was convicted of murder during her second trial on August 28, 2018. On October 18, 2018 she was sentenced to life imprisonment with parole eligibility after 20 years.
Ashley Zhao was a five-year-old girl who was discovered dead in her family's restaurant in Jackson Township, Stark County, Ohio, U.S.A., on January 10, 2017. Her death sparked an investigation lead by the local police department in cooperation with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On May 7, 2017, American teenager Brooke Skylar Richardson gave birth at home alone and buried her newborn daughter in the backyard of her parents' house in Carlisle, Ohio. Two months later she described what had happened to her doctor, who informed police. Richardson was charged with but acquitted of aggravated murder, child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter, and was only found guilty of serious mistreatment of a corpse. She was subsequently given three years of probation, which was ended early by the court.