Divorce attorney turned hit man employer, Manuel Martinez, is ATL’s Lawyer of the Day. Martha Neil reports in the ABA Journal that the New York ex-lawyer was sentenced to 25 years to life for hiring a hit man to kill his client’s husband 18 years ago, “during a bitter divorce trial.” That’s really bitter.

From the New York Daily News:

Martinez reportedly collected $100,000 for hiring the hit man who fired three bullets into George Kogan on Oct. 23, 1990, as the victim lingered outside his girlfriend’s E. 69th St. apartment….

Martinez was “a lawyer who became a murderer,” Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann told the Supreme Court jury in Manhattan.

The jury deliberated three days before convicting the lawyer of second-degree murder and soliciting. Prosecutors said Martinez admitted his involvement in Kogan’s death to his ex-wife and an ex-con pal.

The lawyer was actually indicted a decade ago while serving a prison term in Mexico on unrelated charges.

From a Mexican prison for drug charges to a U.S. prison for murder charges. We wonder if this guy snickered his way through the lawyer’s oath.

Martinez’s client, Barbara Kogan, collected $4 million in insurance money after her husband’s murder, but she’s hanging out uncharged in Puerto Rico. “To say that this is an unusual case may be the understatement of my career,” the ruling judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus, said.

N.Y. Lawyer Gets 25 Years to Life in Murder of Client’s Husband [ABA Journal]
He’s guilty in ‘90 slay of millionaire [New York Daily News]