Justice of a sort

Dan Markel with his children and parents

Donna Adelson, the mother of Wendi Adelson, was convicted yesterday of being part of the successful conspiracy to murder Florida State University law professor Dan Markel in 2014.

Donna’s son Charlie was convicted of the same crimes in 2023.

I would say the odds that Wendi Adelson herself was part of that conspiracy are . . . extremely high (she is being treated as an un-indicted co-conspirator by prosecutors).

I had a tangential involvement in this sordid tragedy, in a couple of ways.

(1) At the time of Markel’s murder, an unhinged law professor publicily suggested I might somehow be involved, because I had had an internet argument with Markel a couple of years earlier, when he asked me to censor some comments on my blog Inside the Law School Scam, and I declined to do so.

(2) A few years after the murder, a hiring committee at the University of Colorado Law School decided to make Wendi Adelson a finalist for a legal writing professorship, and I had to expend some time and energy pointing out that an alleged tendency to murder one’s colleagues could be considered disqualifying, at least under certain circumstances.

The most striking aspect of this case is that it could not have been more obvious from the start that Charlie and Donna Adelson, at least, had orchestrated the contract killing of Markel, yet it took nine and eleven years, respectively, to convict them of this horrific crime. (Markel and Adelson were parents to two young children at the time of the murder, which was motivated by a post-divorce custody battle).

Wendi Adelson remains to this date uncharged for her alleged involvement.