Diane Alexis Whipple was an American lacrosse player and college coach. She was killed in a dog attack in San Francisco on January 26, 2001. The dogs involved were two Presa Canarios. Paul Schneider, the dogs' owner, is a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood and is serving three life sentences in state prison. The dogs were looked after by Schneider's attorneys, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, a husband and wife who lived in the same apartment building as Whipple. After the fatal attack, the state brought criminal charges against the attorneys. Noel, who was not present during the attack, was convicted of manslaughter. Knoller, who was present, was charged with implied-malice second-degree murder and convicted by the jury. Knoller's murder conviction, an unusual result for an unintended dog attack, was rejected by the trial judge but ultimately upheld. The case clarified the meaning of implied malice murder.
United States v. Alkhabaz, 104 F.3d 1492 was a case brought against University of Michigan undergraduate Abraham Jacob Alkhabaz, a.k.a. Jake Baker, related to several incidents regarding snuff stories that he wrote while he was a student at the University of Michigan. Alkhabaz was charged with violation of 18 U.S.C. s 875(c), communicating via interstate or foreign commerce threats to kidnap or injure another person. The case raised immediate First Amendment concerns and is considered an important one in the history of cyber law.
Mateen Ahmad Cleaves is an American retired basketball player. He played parts of six seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was an All-American college player for Michigan State, where he led the Spartans to a national championship in 2000. He has also worked as a studio analyst for Fox Sports.
The Angola Three are three African American former prison inmates who were held for decades in solitary confinement while imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The latter two were indicted in April 1972 for the killing of a prison corrections officer; they were convicted in January 1974. Wallace and Woodfox served more than 40 years each in solitary, the "longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history".
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Marie Haydée Beltrán Torres is a Puerto Rican nationalist who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 1977 bombing of the Mobil Oil Building in Manhattan that killed one person and injured several others. Torres was linked by a fingerprint on a job application she filled at the Mobil building just before the bombing. She and her husband, Carlos Torres, were members of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), which claimed responsibility for the Mobil Oil bombing and numerous others. Supporters of Torres considered her a political prisoner. She was released on April 14, 2009.
Courts of Michigan include:
Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones was a seven-year-old African American girl from Detroit's East Side who was shot in the neck and killed by police officer Joseph Weekley during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department's Special Response Team. The Team was targeting a suspect in the apartment a floor above Jones' on May 16, 2010. Her death drew national media attention and led U.S. Representative John Conyers to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a federal investigation into the incident.
Elias Abuelazam, also known as Elias Abullazam, is an Israeli convicted murderer, and a suspect of serial killings and stabbings with a racial motive. He is suspected in a string of eighteen stabbing attacks from May to August 2010 which resulted in five deaths. Most of the alleged attacks occurred in Genesee County, Michigan. Five stabbings occurred elsewhere: three in Leesburg, Virginia, one in Toledo, Ohio, and one in his native home in Ramla, Israel. All of his alleged victims were described as "small framed" men, most of them African Americans.
Gershwin Allen Drain is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Nancy Ann Seaman is an American woman and former teacher at Longacre Elementary School in Farmington Hills, Michigan, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 2005 for killing her husband with a hatchet. Jurors rejected her argument that she killed her husband in self-defense and decided that the murder was premeditated. She is currently serving her life sentence at the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility.
Debra Jean Milke is a German-American woman who spent over 25 years in prison in the state of Arizona. She was one of three people sentenced to death for the December 2, 1989 shooting death of her four-year-old son, Christopher Conan Milke. Her alleged conspirators were her roommate James Lynn Styers and his friend Roger Mark Scott. Neither testified against her and both agreed that she was not present at the shooting. Scott implicated Milke as the mastermind while Styers said she had no involvement whatsoever. They implicated each other as the actual shooter. Who that was remains a subject of speculation.
Rosemarie Elizabeth Aquilina is an American judge. She is a judge of the 30th circuit court in Ingham County, Michigan. Previously, Aquilina was the 55th District Court Judge, where she served as both a Sobriety Court Judge as well as the Chief Judge. She is best known as the judge who sentenced Larry Nassar in the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal.
Marvin Charles Gabrion is an American murderer, rapist, and suspected serial killer convicted of the 1997 kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman, of Cedar Springs, Michigan. Timmerman and her 11-month-old daughter, Shannon, disappeared two days before Gabrion was set to stand trial on rape charges filed by Rachel the previous summer. Rachel's body was found in Oxford Lake, weighted down by cinder blocks. Shannon remains missing, but is presumed deceased. Although Gabrion was not tried for killing Shannon, court documents describe her murder as “virtually undisputed.”
Rasmea Yousef Odeh, also known as Rasmea Yousef, Rasmieh Steve, and Rasmieh Joseph Steve, is a Palestinian Jordanian and former American citizen who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) convicted by Israeli military courts for involvement in the 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing, resulting in the killing of two young civilians. Odeh claimed that the confessions were obtained under torture, and that the charges were political. She was sentenced to life in prison in Israel and spent 10 years in prison before she was released in a prisoner exchange with the PFLP in 1980. After her release to Jordan, she immigrated in 1990 to the United States, became a U.S. citizen, and served as associate director at the Arab American Action Network in Chicago, Illinois.
Corey Miller, better known by his stage name C-Murder, is an American rapper. He initially gained fame in the mid-1990s as a part of his brother Master P's label No Limit Records, primarily as a member of the label's supergroup, TRU. Miller went on to release several solo albums of his own through the label, including 1998's platinum Life or Death. C-Murder has released nine albums altogether on six different labels, No Limit Records, TRU Records, Koch Records, Asylum Records, RBC Records, and Venti Uno.
Brendan Ray Dassey is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who at 16 confessed to being a party to first-degree murder, mutilation of a corpse, and second-degree sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison with the earliest possibility of parole in 2048. His videotaped interrogation and confession, which he recanted at trial, substantially contributed to his conviction. Parts were shown, but much was left out, in the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer (2015). The series examined the 2005–2007 investigation, prosecution, and trials of Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, both of whom were convicted of murdering the photographer Teresa Halbach on October 31, 2005.
The 2010 Michigan Attorney General election took place on November 2, 2010, to elect the Attorney General of Michigan. Two-term incumbent Mike Cox was term-limited by the Michigan Constitution from seeking a third term. Republican Bill Schuette, a former Congressman, state Senator and judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, defeated Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton with 54 percent of the vote.
On October 8, 2020, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the arrests of 13 men suspected of orchestrating a domestic terror plot to kidnap American politician Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan, and otherwise using violence to overthrow the state government. Some have labeled the attempt as an example of stochastic terrorism, where violent rhetoric by prominent figures inspired the plot.
Frances Kay Behm is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
