In our coverage of Stephen Mark McDaniel, the 25-year-old Mercer Law School graduate who has been charged with the murder of Lauren Giddings, his former classmate and neighbor, we have repeatedly stressed that McDaniel remains innocent until proven guilty. We have pointed to past examples of individuals who were viewed by the public as almost certainly guilty of particular crimes, but who turned out to be innocent — such as Gary Condit and Richard Jewell, to say nothing of the numerous prisoners who have been freed thanks to DNA evidence.
It is therefore appropriate to ask at this time: Has Stephen McDaniel been framed for the murder of Lauren Giddings?
Let’s look at some of the theories — and the evidence — suggesting this might be the case….
In light of new evidence that has come to light, however, a better nickname has emerged for Stephen McDaniel. Until a superior option presents itself, the defendant may occasionally be referred to in these pages as “Hacksaw McDaniel.”
What is the basis for this new handle? Let’s take a look at the arrest warrant for Stephen M. McDaniel, which lays out the gruesome particulars….
Through the Federalist Society, I got to meet one of my heroes, Justice Clarence Thomas. So did Stephen McDaniel, who expressed his admiration for Justice Thomas’s integrity.
I once aspired to be a prosecutor and a federal judge. So did Stephen McDaniel, who hoped to serve as a prosecutor on his way to realizing his dream of serving on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Stephen McDaniel’s mother, Glenda McDaniel, once asked her son whether romance was possible between him and any woman. My mother has posed similar questions of me.
Lauren Giddings
And this, thankfully, is where the similarities end. My hair, while sometimes problematic, doesn’t look like the result of “a grizzly bear banging Bob Marley’s mom” (as one ATL tipster described McDaniel’s mane). In law school, I wore khakis and button-down shirts to class, not chain mail (which doesn’t sound very comfortable). I have never been accused of burglarizing apartments (to steal condoms). And I’ve certainly never been accused of murder.
As we reported last night, Stephen M. McDaniel, 25, has been charged with the horrific murder of Lauren Giddings, 27, a bright and beautiful recent graduate of Mercer Law. Giddings’s decapitated torso was found on June 30. The search for the rest of her remains continues.
Let’s take a closer look at this deeply disturbing case….
It comes as no surprise, but going to a college football game at your alma matter is supposed to be fun, even if your team sucks. And generally speaking, Georgia Tech sucks. Okay fine, the team won the ACC title in 2009, but that title was just vacated. Nobody likes a cheater.
But even if your team sucks more than Tori Black, you can still drink the suck away at a pre-game tailgate party. And if you’re heading to a home game at Georgia Tech, you can grab some Chick-Fil-A before the game, too.
And that is exactly what Georgia Tech alum Mary Clayton did before a football game in September of last year. She might not have been drinking before the game, but she definitely wanted to “eat mor chikin,” so she tried to enter the stadium with a chicken sandwich in hand. What started for Clayton as a game to remember turned into a day she’d like to forget, due to an alleged sandwich security strip search….
A recent graduate of Mercer Law School in Macon, Georgia, Stephen Mark McDaniel, has been charged with murder, according to inmate information posted tonight on the website of the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office. As you may recall, Stephen McDaniel was a neighbor and classmate of Lauren Giddings, the slain Mercer Law graduate whose torso was found on June 30, inside a trash bin just outside her apartment building.
McDaniel, 25, was previously identified as a person of interest in the killing of Lauren Giddings, 27. He is currently being held in Bibb County jail, having been charged with two counts of burglary in an unrelated case.
Bibb County jail records are how the murder charge against McDaniel came to light. Let’s take a look at Stephen McDaniel’s inmate information sheet….
In a New York Times op-ed, mentioned previously in Morning Docket, Professor Zachary Shemtob and I argue that executions should be made public. More specifically, we argue that executions should be broadcast live or recorded for future release, on the web or on television.
Public execution has some unsavory connotations, perhaps dating back to the days when hangings took place before rowdy crowds in the public square. But when you stop and think about it, the idea really isn’t all that crazy….
A week and a half ago, we told you about the death of a Mercer Law student. The student has now been officially identified as Lauren Giddings, a recent Mercer Law graduate who was back in Macon studying for the bar.
The body was found dismembered. Our sources say that the body was decapitated. Police still haven’t found all of the body parts.
We have an update from Macon. Our sources are telling us that the police have two persons of interest, but law students are still being questioned….
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it. Most lawyers would cringe at the thought of spending their entire careers trying to find loopholes that will release drunk drivers back onto the streets. After all, drunk drivers are one of the few life forms more despised than lawyers.
Southern drunks are in luck, however, because Cerbone DUI Defense are not most lawyers. In fact, the father and son Cerbone team has taken on the job with relish, building an entire DUI defense empire in Savannah, Georgia.
It’s not really surprising that Savannah would need some good DUI lawyers. This is the city that throws the second largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the world. I can also confirm from personal experience that it is one of the few remaining places in the country without an open container law. There is really no shortage of alcohol-related fun to be had in Savannah.
Enter the Cerbone team, stage right. They are waiting around day and night, right outside the police station, to take your case when things get out of hand. You’ll be so happy that they get your case thrown out that you won’t even mind when they use your full name and share the details of your drunken escapades to drum up more business…
When faced with a job that isn’t making you happy, sometimes creativity is necessary in order to escape. Because hey, not everyone can enjoy courtroom glory like that of Jose Baez, knight in shining armor for Casey Anthony. And so, for these people, there are many career alternatives to choose from.
We’ve written previously about these creative types: some decided that they’d rather walk across the country than work another day in Biglaw; others decided to hang their own shingles in the wonderful world of mobile cupcakes.
If doing something that will make you or your customers wish for a summer oasis is your thing, then I say go for it.
But some lawyers opt to pair business sense with their creativity. Some lawyers realize that during the summer, the ideal treat is not scaling a mountain or munching on a cupcake, but instead, licking a popsicle or two. And that is how one former prosecutor started a delicious frozen empire in Georgia to become the self-proclaimed Earl of Pops….
The stories coming out of Mercer Law School yesterday evening and this morning are surreal. Yesterday in Non-Sequiturs we mentioned that a recent Mercer Law graduate, Lauren Giddings, was found dead. Decapitated.
UPDATE: We understand that the Macon police department is not confirming that the body is that of Lauren Giddings. As of now, she’s still listed as missing.
FURTHER UPDATE (7/12/11): It appears that the body found was that of Lauren Giddings. Read more here.
Understandably, this has put the Mercer Law campus on edge. Giddings had returned to school to study for the bar, and there are a lot of people there who are now worrying about their safety.
Even more disturbingly, Giddings’s neighbor, who is also a Mercer Law graduate, has been arrested on burglary charges.
And there are police dogs roving around campus looking for missing body parts…
We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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