Monday’s shootout at the Lloyd George Courthouse in Las Vegas can be described as tragic, frightening, and now, surreal. Reports are out this morning that the gunman, Johnny Lee Wicks, previously served prison time for killing his brother. The ABA Journal collects the information:

Stories by the Associated Press, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal detail Wicks’ criminal past.

Wicks killed his brother after an argument escalated over whether his motorcycle could outrun his brother’s car, according to the Commercial Appeal account. Wicks had claimed he killed his brother in self defense, although no weapon was found near the body. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 55 years in prison. On appeal, the sentence was reduced to 12 to 15 years, and Wicks was paroled after serving six years.

I’m not a huge fan of taking legal advice from the Bible, but surely killing your brother because you’re jealous over his sheep car deserves a harsher penalty than six years.

But we’re not done with Johnny Lee Wicks’s past. More after the jump.

Details continue to roll in about Johnny Lee Wicks, the shooter during yesterday’s gunfight at the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse in Las Vegas. Apparently Wicks set fire to his own house before heading to the courthouse. ABC News reports:

The senior citizen who is being blamed for a Las Vegas courthouse shooting that killed a security officer had set his condo on fire in a fit of rage before the attack.

Friends and family told ABC News that Johnny Lee Wicks, 66, was so upset that his monthly Social Security check was being reduced that he set fire to his home in a gated retirement community around 5 a.m. Monday.

Wicks had filed a racial discrimination suit against the Social Security Administration because his benefits were cut. The suit got tossed and, apparently, that is what set him off. Over on True/Slant, Michael Roston hopes that Wicks’s deranged understanding of race in America isn’t used by neocons as a polemic against tolerance:

Of course, I’m still trying to be hopeful that the fact that Wicks was a black man shooting at a federal building won’t also be worked into the kulturkampf by agents of conservative histrionics. Rush Limbaugh is taking a few days off after his brush with the medical system, so he won’t be going on air tomorrow to declare that crimes like this happen only in “Obama’s America.” If anyone else out there was thinking about saying something like that, please, don’t. Let’s just all be thankful that there weren’t any more senseless deaths from this tragedy today.

Hear, hear. Bullets don’t care about skin color. An Above the Law reader who works at the Lloyd George Courthouse provides an eyewitness account of the harrowing minutes during the shooting.

The story after the jump.

A deputy U.S. marshal and a court security officer were shot this morning when a gunman opened fire in the lobby of the Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas. The gunman was shot in the head and killed near the courthouse. The identity of the shooter and possible motives for the shooting are not yet known.

UPDATE: Las Vegas Now reports that the court security officer has died. You can check out an amateur video, featuring loud gunshots and the cameraman muttering “holy s**t,” over here. (Gavel bang: commenter.)

If you have additional information — e.g., you were at the courthouse when the shooting took place — feel free to email us. Thanks.

UPDATE: A first-person account appears here.

2 Guards Shot in Las Vegas Federal Building [Associated Press via ABA Journal]

In yesterday’s post regarding the tragedy that left a Howrey associate, Elizabeth Fontaine (pictured), and three of her family members dead, we promised to keep you posted on new developments. We now bring you this update, from the Orange County Register:

Sheriff’s investigators believe they know how four people, including two young sisters, died in a bloody heap Monday inside a million-dollar home in Talega.

Grandmother Bonnie Hoult, 67, fired the gun that killed her daughter and grandchildren before turning the .357 magnum on herself, a senior homicide investigator told the Register, citing the department’s prevailing theory behind the killings that rocked a gated community.

He said her daughter Elizabeth Fontaine, 38, appeared to have been a willing participant in the killings, with both she and her mother choosing death for themselves and the girls instead of allowing the sisters to be sent temporarily into the custody of a sister of their father.

More about these modern-day Medeas, after the jump.

Tragedy struck the Irvine, CA, and Houston offices of Howrey earlier this week. The ABA Journal reports:

A Howrey intellectual property lawyer was found dead along with her daughters and mother Monday in an apparent murder-suicide.

Associate Elizabeth Fontaine, her two daughters and her mother were killed on the same day that a California judge gave temporary custody of the girls to an aunt, according to the Los Angeles Times’ L.A. Now blog and the Associated Press. Authorities are conducting forensics tests to determine who pulled the trigger.

Howrey confirmed that Elizabeth Fontaine was a Howrey employee in a firm-wide email yesterday. The email, plus AN UPDATE, after the jump.

Ed. note: Welcome to ATL’s first foray into serial fiction. “My Job Is Murder,” a mystery set in a D.C. appellate boutique, will appear one chapter at a time, M-W-F, over the next few weeks. Prior installments appear here; please read them first.

Susanna Dokupil can be reached by email at sdokupil@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook.

Katarina, intrigued by Tyler’s phone call, spent a few moments researching batrachotoxin. The poison, produced by phyllobates terribles from South America, is highly deadly, killing a man on contact with only as much as the weight of a few grains of salt. The poison has no known antidote.

She also looked up John Tiburon. A high-level Justice Department appointee, Tiburon had resigned after he had been televised — and identified by name and position — in the audience of a gay marriage rally at a time when the administration was taking a strong line in favor of traditional marriage. He had never revealed his sexual orientation at the office, and he hadn’t sought the publicity. But he had been unhirable for any traditional firm or government position after that.

She kept reading. Tiburon’s biography mentioned that he spent time in Colombia working for the Peace Corps. The Golden Poison Dart Frog, she had just read, is indigenous to certain parts of Colombia.

Curious, she walked down to Thrax’s office, where the detectives were testing for traces of the poison.

“How was he poisoned?” she asked, standing carefully outside the yellow caution tape.

The dispute between Tremayne Durham and Rob Chambers started so innocently. Durham wanted to sell ice cream. Chambers makes ice cream trucks. Durham asked Chambers to make him an ice cream truck. Yay. Who wants a Bomb Pop?

But Durham changed his mind. He asked Chambers to refund him the $18,000 he paid to Chambers for the truck. Chambers demurred. Now Durham is suing Chambers for the money.

But suing Chambers wasn’t Durham’s first effort to recover his losses.

No, Durham’s first plan to get the $18,000 back involved kidnapping Chambers and his friend Adam Calbreath, holding Chambers hostage, and shooting Calbreath to death.

The lawsuit represents “Plan B.” KATU in Portland reports:

Durham still wants his money back, all $18,000 - even after he confessed to murdering Adam Calbreath. Calbreath was someone Chambers considered as a loyal friend. …

Durham is serving 30 years for murdering Calbreath and taking Chambers hostage while shoving a gun in his stomach.

“He had said, ‘Look at what you made me do,’” Chambers recounts. “He said, ‘I’ve been robbing and killing people to get to you.’”

Can you imagine if this guy had actually gone through with his plan to sell frozen treats to children? How would he handle a kid who stiffed him a quarter? “Look what you made me do, I had to bury your mother alive while I was looking for her purse.”

It’d be as if Mr. Softee were suddenly replaced by Pennywise.

This isn’t the first time Durham’s made news. Details after the jump.

Mental note: Do not mess with lawyers in South Carolina. Don’t believe me? Just read the Charlotte Observer:

Conway Attorney Irby Walker was charged today with trying to hire someone to kill another attorney, according to police.

Walker, 58, was charged with solicitation of a felony after Doug Thornton told police Sept. 11 that Walker had made threats against his life and believed he was trying to follow through on those threats, according to Horry County police Lt. Jamie DeBari.

According to The Sun News, the going price to take down a fellow member of the bar is $10,000.

Really? I mean, who can even afford that in this economy?

Irby Walker’s attorney responded to the charges with the Chewbacca defense:

“I know there’s some bad blood between [Walker and Thornton], but this entire thing defies comprehension, and I suggest it is illogical,” said Walker’s attorney, George McMaster, during the hearing. “He didn’t get a gun, he didn’t go try to go shoot somebody, he’s probably not capable of shooting somebody.”

Police: S.C. lawyer plotted to hire killer [Charlotte Observer]
Police: Lawyer sought hitman to kill rival [The Sun News]

Last night, George Sodini, 48, walked into an LA Fitness Center near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and opened fire on those exercising inside. Early reports say he killed three women and injured up to 15, including his ex-girlfriend. He then turned the gun on himself.

Sodini’s LinkedIn profile says he was a systems analyst at K&L Gates. We reached out to the firm this morning. A spokesperson responded to say:

K&L Gates is deeply saddened by last night’s events, and offers its condolences to the families and friends of all who were involved in this terrible tragedy.

ABC News has found Sodini’s online diary. We ran a WhoIs search and determined that the diary is not a hoax. A George Sodini of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, registered the website in August 2000.

It is incredibly disturbing.

When Dustin Kolodziej was a student at the South Texas College of Law, he decided to take law school lessons outside of the classroom. While classmates were poring over contract law outlines, Kolodziej was watching Dateline and taking on million dollar challenges. Well, at least one such challenge — and now the recent graduate has filed a lawsuit alleging that a true offer was made and fulfilled.

In December 2006, Dateline reported on the execution-style murders of four people at a Florida business. Nelson Serrano, a wealthy businessman, was convicted of the deaths and is now on death row. During the course of the report, Dateline interviewed Serrano’s defense attorney, James Cheney Mason (who is most famous for representing diaper-wearing NASA astronaut, Lisa Nowak).

The murders happened in Central Florida. Serrano was in Georgia that day, and seen on surveillance cameras at an Atlanta La Quinta Inn shortly after the murders took place. In reconstructing the prosecution’s timeline for the day, Mason claimed there was only a 28-minute period during which Serrano could have gotten from the Atlanta Airport to his hotel. From an MSNBC transcript:

Mason: I challenge anybody to show me, I’ll pay them a million dollars if they can do it.
Murphy: If they can do it in the time alloted?
Mason: 28 minutes. Can’t happen. Didn’t happen.

Well, Kolodziej decided it could happen.

* Former AG Alberto Gonzales might want to consult with Henry Kissinger (on planning vacations abroad when the world wants to put you on trial for war crimes). Spanish prosecutors are expected to indict him along with the rest of the “Bush Six” today. Columbia adjunct law professor Scott Horton gives a rundown of the political dimensions of the torture case. [Daily Beast]

* Music producer Phil Spector found guilty of hurting our eyes with his hair. And second-degree murder. He’ll be sentenced to at least 18 years. [Los Angeles Times]

* SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas took questions from a small group of high school students in Washington, D.C. recently. He admitted that when he gets depressed, he goes online. We were hoping he would say he surfed over to Above The Law, but instead, he likes to look up Douglas MacArthur speeches. [New York Times]

* Student loans suck, but you gotta pay them. Or risk losing your law license, like this Houston attorney. No Lexus and 3500 sq ft for him. [National Law Journal] … Update 6:57 p.m.: A tipster wrote in to clarify the details of this story:

After reading the opinion and the briefs, it’s clear that he was not disbarred for failure to pay off the debt. He was disbarred for his failure to meet deadlines given by the bar. The bar gave him a deadline by which he was to either start making payments or discharge the debt through bankruptcy. He failed to do either. In light of the fact that this was a deadline that they had previously extended, they concluded his cavalier attitude towards their deadline was evidence of his irresponsibility and thus his lack of fitness for the practice of law.

* The New York Times praises President Obama’s decision to reinstate the American Bar Association as reviewers of judicial nominations and defends the ABA against charges of liberal bias when vetting. [New York Times]

* Wisconsin parents made up a fake law firm to mail goods to their imprisoned son without having them screened, thanks to attorney-client privilege. Diabolical… but very creative. [Daily Citizen]

* Weil wants to collect $55 million for its work as bankruptcy counsel to Lehman Brothers. Partners, associates, and paralegals combined billed over 100,000 to the matter over four months, with about a third of those hours coming just from partners and senior counsel. [Bloomberg]

* Paris isn’t the only Hilton getting in trouble for sex. The former manager of a restaurant in the Hilton Minneapolis is suing the Hilton for “undirected” sexual harrassment because he walked in on upper management having an orgy. [Courthouse News Service]

* GMAC LLC, the financing arm of General Motors, is not allowing holders of so-called SmartNotes to exchange thier notes for more secure bonds. The exchange, which the company is offering as a ploy to get some of the bail-out money, is “limited to institutional notes and does not include retail debt instruments.” This means that holders of SmartNotes may get nothing if the company goes bankrupt, which could lead to some serious law suits. [Bloomberg.com]

* Lawyers: 1, bankers: 0. Former bankruptcy lawyer James H.M. Sprayregen is returning to Kirkland & Ellis after a three-year stint in the restructuring group at Goldman Sachs. The decision represents a triumph for corporate lawyers in their long standing rivalry against financiers. [The New York Times]

* Protestors in Thailand have concentrated their efforts on the airports in anticipation of a court verdict Tuesday that will likely order the Somchai’s People Power Party to disband. [Reuters]

* A plea-deal has been offered to an 8-year-old boy in Arizona, who confessed to killing his father and another man. [ABC News]

* The Federal Trade Commission is stopping the merger of two software companies because of the potential loss of competition. Capitalism will prevail! [Courthouse News Service]

Today marks the start of two weeks of “Assassins” at Columbia Law School. The game will start internally, undoubtedly as a training exercise for CLS students before they start hunting the deadliest prey: NYU students.

The game, if you’ve never played it, is awesome. The rules are simple:

* You will be given a target. Find them and “assassinate” them by hitting them in the back with a sock.

* Get your next assignment from your “assassinated” target; his/her former target becomes yours.

* If you “swing & miss” your target, you must wait one hour before attempting another assassination.

* Once you are “assassinated,” you are out of the game.

* The last player standing is the winner.

As we understand it, over 200 students have signed up. An organizer tells us why:

If stereotypes are to believed, CLS students are familiar with watching their backs, eyeing their rivals with suspicion, viciously taking any means necessary to eliminate their competition, and gloating with vituperation at victories over colleagues.

In this job market, “Assassins” is much better training than M&A.

Read the full rules and regulations, after the jump.

[Ed. note: This post is by ALEX, one of the finalists in ATL Idol, the “reality blogging” competition that will determine ATL’s next editor. It is marked with Alex’s avatar (at right).]

I heard once that people don’t like lawyers. Upon honest reflection, I’m inclined to agree with them. Hell, some people might not like me, even though I’m pathologically nice, fun at parties, and a member of the ABA.

Of course, hating lawyers is never justification for killing lawyers. Shakespeare be damned.

Earlier this month, the wife of a Tennessee lawyer became the avatar of lawyer-hate, strangling her husband and hiding his body in the bedroom closet with, presumably, all of the other unmentionables.

So reports WATE News Channel 6:

Nashville police arrested the estranged wife of an attorney in his strangulation killing. A housekeeper found the body of 44-year-old James Cannon in a bedroom closet on June 23. Police said Cannon had custody of the couple’s children, who are 9 years old, 7 years old and 18 months old. Cannon had filed for divorce from Kelly Cannon in February and obtained an order of protection to keep her away from him and the children.

Mrs. Cannon’s story seems, um, airtight:

Police said Kelly Cannon told them she went to her husband’s home the night of June 22, but said she couldn’t find him.

You know, I would have never seen this coming from Mrs. Cannon. I’ve always trusted women with arty glasses. Never again.

It’s a shame, though; there are much more entertaining and lawful ways to seek revenge on a lawyer, like deleting the serial commas throughout the final draft of a brief or replacing all of his two-button suits with three-button suits.

In any event, this woman is clearly a threat to our people and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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]

The Atlanta office of Paul Hastings suffered a tragedy last week. Jermaine Acevedo, a temp worker in Paul Hastings’ record department, shot and killed Raven Buckley, a Paul Hastings secretary, and then killed himself. The murder-suicide happened Friday afternoon outside of Paul Hastings’ building.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Buckley had worked as a legal secretary there for about a year. Both were working Friday, said police.

They dated at one point, but it wasn’t clear to police if they were still dating when the confrontation took place Friday afternoon about 3:30 p.m.

According to police, Buckley was in the courtyard in front of the Bank of America Plaza with a friend on break when they believe Acevedo encountered her, though police don’t know the exact circumstances.

At some point, according to police, Buckley and Acevedo were talking while sitting at a picnic table in the courtyard when their conversation escalated into an argument.

Buckley jumped up to leave, according to police. Acevedo grabbed her and held her down. He pulled out a handgun and shot her three times, at least once in the head. He then shot himself in the head.

On Friday night, law firm spokesperson Lapiano released a brief statement that the firm was “deeply saddened and shocked by this tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims’ family and friends. Please be assured that we are cooperating fully with local authorities on this ongoing investigation.”

Lapiano said Saturday the firm planned to bring grief counselors in Monday to help the staff deal with the killings.

Acevedo was 30 and Buckley was just 25.

‘Awful’ tragedy: Law firm rocked by murder-suicide [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
Paul Hastings Secretary Killed in Apparent Murder-Suicide Outside Atlanta Office [Law.com]

* New accounting rules for M&A. [DealBook]

* Lilly contemplates $1 billion payment to settle civil and criminal investigations relating to its marketing of Zyprexa. [New York Times]

* NYPD officer accused of pimping child. [MSNBC]

* Ex-priest jailed for murder via exorcism. [CNN]

* Indiana man arrested for making his own crosswalk. [The Indy Channel]

* Nader takes steps toward another run for the presidency in 2008. [Bloomberg]

* Resignation in Detroit text-message scandal (previously discussed here). [Detroit News]

* A proud American tradition unknown in the rest of the world: bail for profit. [New York Times]

* Legal luminaries at the SOTU. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Trial begins in alleged microwaving of infant. [CNN]

* TRO against Patriots’ Moss extended until after Super Bowl. [SI]

* Mortgage crisis may affect litigation departments. [WSJ Law Blog]

* U.S. jails Colombian FARC leader. [BBC]

Defendants in deep doo-doo come up with all sorts of innovative defenses. Last week, we learned that fashion mogul Dov Charney, accused of sexually harassing a former employee, claimed in a deposition that when he appeared before the plaintiff wearing nothing but a strategically placed sock, he was merely testing a new line of underwear.

But this is even more dubious. At a murder trial underway in New York, a father accused of killing his seven-year-old stepdaughter has introduced into evidence a “World’s Greatest Dad” mug she once bought for him.

If the mug has writing on it, you must acquit.

‘World’s Greatest Dad’ Mug Seen In Nixzmary Trial [wcbstv.com]
Implausible defense department [Overlawyered]

* Hot lawyers make more money. And we needed a study to tell us this? [Legal Blog Watch via ABA Journal; WSJ Law Blog]

* A truly insane murder case. And yes, Debra Opri — who has represented Michael Jackson and Larry Birkhead, among other boldface names — is on the scene. [DealBreaker; HedgeFund.net]

* Ann Althouse wonders: “We’ve already seen every possible permutation of Hillary, haven’t we?” (And this is why we adore HRC — she’s the Madonna of modern American politics, constantly reinventing herself.) [Althouse]

* When it comes to law firm partnership, breaking up is hard to do. Especially when criminal charges are involved. [National Law Journal via Blogonaut]