When Tetyana Nikitana was shot to death recently as she left the school where she was a teacher, the suspect, according to police, was her former mother-in-law. Nikitian, 34, was a mother of two and an immigrant from the Ukraine living in Utah.
According to the Deseret News, the suspect in the shooting is 70-year-old Mary Nance Hanson, the mother of Nikitana’s ex-husband, Dan Jankowski. Police stated that Jankowski was not a suspect in the case, nor was a he a person of interest. “He is just a relative of the suspect,” said Lt. Don Hutson told the Deseret News
Police are still hoping to piece together the case, and determine the motives that Hanson may have had for such a gruesome act. Hanson was the one who called 911 after the shooting.
A study of the divorce record between Nikitana and Jankowski revealed the couple’s tumultuous divorce after six years of marriage, filled with fear and animosity. In those records, starting in 2005, Nikitana stated that she feared for her life and those of her children at the hands of her husband.
Jankowski, on the other hand, filed a large volume of divorce records the belief that his then-wife was attempting to frame ... Read more..
The London-based office of convicted con artist Bernie Madoff will not be charged in the criminal investigation into a large investment scam resulting in billions of lost investments around the world.
The United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office said their investigators have not produced enough evidence against the London branch of Madoff’s operation to “provide a realistic prospect of conviction,” . But the SFO also pointed out they will continue to investigate a handful of funds with outposts in Europe that invested with Madoff in the search of “wider aspects of the fraud.”
In March 2009, the Manhattan-based investor pleaded guilty to one of the largest recorded Ponzi schemes in history. Madoff had used funds from new investors to pay off older investments in a vast pyramid-style scam that has resulted in $13 billion of lost investments, according to U.S. prosecutors.
The conviction has sparked numerous lawsuits in Europe and the U.S. as beguiled investors untangle a complicated system carried out by Madoff. The scheme involved selling investments with no real value, on the promise of a high return that would come through in a short period of time.
Madoff Securities International was mostly owned by Madoff himself and functioned as the main ... Read more..
There has been a fair amount of commentary regarding a decision of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (formerly the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary and part of the House of Lords) in a matter called R (on application of E) v. Governing Board of JFS.
The case involved the desire of a man referred to only as E to have his son, M, admitted to London’s prestigious Jewish Free School. There are many more applicants than spaces in the school and it gives preference to children who are recognized as Jewish either by the rule of matrilineal descent derived from Deuteronmomy 7:3-4 (”… neither shall his daughter take on to thy son/For they shall turn thy son away from following me”) or by an Orthodox conversion (i.e., one recognized by the Office of Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth).
E is Jewish but M’s mother is a former Roman Catholic whose conversion was supervised by a Reform rabbi, so was not recognized by the OCR.
M was denied admission and E sued, arguing that the preference violated the Racial Relations Act of 1976 which forbids discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. Is that what happened?
A 5-4 majority of the ... Read more..
Thank you to Professor Slavin for asking me, back in my first month as a wide-eyed 1L, to be on the blog. I thank you for both your confidence in me and this opportunity to attempt to prove you correct.
I started law school at a disadvantage; I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I say this is a disadvantage because I met many people who not only wanted to be a lawyer but had known this about themselves since childhood. Some followed in the steps of a family member and some found their way by other means. That wasn’t me. I don’t want to dwell on myself for very long; I only introduce this to preface my assessment of the legal community in Milwaukee.
As a woman who knew nothing more about being a lawyer than the little that I had seen on television, I was surprised and pleased by what I have found through Marquette. I moved from one of the largest cities in the country with a huge, and quite imposing, legal community to Milwaukee—for reasons other than to go to Marquette University Law School. I allowed myself to be swayed by the sparse contact that I had with Marquette ... Read more..
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack and Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Ellen Brostrom are wary of almost all of the labels that people try to put on them and on other justices and judges.
But one label they are proud of is mother and daughter, and that was clear Thursday during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at the Law School. The two are believed to be the only mother and daughter to serve on the bench at the same time in Wisconsin history, Gousha said.
“You’ve just been an incredible role model for me,” Judge Brostrom told her mother. Justice Roggensack said she never intentionally put her daughter on the path to being a judge, but she agreed she was very pleased when Bostrom narrowly won election in 2009.
When Gousha asked how the two of them react to labels such as “conservative” or “liberal” when it comes to describing judges, Justice Roggensack said, “I think it’s a lazy definition.” The use of labels reflects the high degree of partisanship of the times, especially when it comes to elections. She said labels are useful in negative campaigning, which is the way campaigns “can hit hardest fastest.”
Most cases that come before ... Read more..
