Best Crime Movies

 Fargo  (1996)

     Set in North Dakota and Minnesota, this dark comedy features a car salesman who arranges to have his wife kidnapped for ransom and a pregnant small town police chief who investigates a pair of related highway murders. Any film that has one killer stuffing another into a wood chipper can't be bad. This film works on all levels.

The Informant  (2009)

     A fact-based comic drama about a pathologically lying FBI whistle-blower in the mid-1990s Archer Daniels Midland lysine price-fixing conspiracy. The film is an adaptation of journalist Kurt Eiechenwald's 2000 book of the same name. Matt Damon, the whistle blowing company embezzler, is brilliant as a stiff from Indiana with a background in science who gets in over his head.

Insomnia  (1997)

     A psychological thriller set in a small Alaskan town near the Arctic Circle about a true crime novelist (Robin Williams) who murdered a high school girl, and the world-weary Los Angeles Detective (Al Pacino) out to arrest him. The exhausted cop (who can't sleep because the sun never sets), tries to cover-up the accidental shooting of his partner by switching ballistics evidence. A riveting small town tale set in a northern wilderness.
    
One Hour Photo  (2002)

     This tense leisurely paced psychological drama features a lonely and alienated box store camera film developer (Robin Williams) who develops a pathological fixation on a man, his wife and their boy who he thinks is the ideal American family. His disillusionment triggers an event that leads to his undoing. This film is more about mood and the bleakness of one man's life than it is about criminal violence.

Se7ven  (1995)

     A gritty detective yarn featuring a pair of homicide investigators (Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) trying to identify and stop a serial killer whose victims have violated one of the seven sins of gluttony: envy, lust, pride, sloth, greed and wrath. In the end the young detective is faced with a sickening dilemma pertaining to the sin of envy. This film is graphic and brutal.

The Departed  (2006)

     Set in Boston, Massachusetts this film is about the rise and bloody fall of Irish crime boss Francis Costello (Jack Nicholson). The film features two state cops (Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon), one corrupt and the other working undercover to identify him. Loosely based on the life of the real Boston mobster Whitey Bulger who, after years as a fugitive, was eventually arrested in California. A great film with a lot of big stars in big roles. (In 2018 Mr. Bulger was beaten to death by fellow inmates who considered him a rat for having been a FBI informant.)

Donnie Brasco  (1997)

     In the 1970s FBI agent Joe D. Pistone infiltrated the Bonanno crime family in New York City. The agent's (Johnny Depp) undercover stint led to the conviction of dozens of Mafia figures. The FBI pulled the agent, using the name Donnie Brasco, off the case just before his cover was blown. A realistic depiction of a crime family, its hierarchy and the type of people who become "made" men.

Goodfellas (1990)

     Unlike "The Godfather" that in some ways romanticized and glorified the Mafia of the 1940s and 50s, the wiseguys portrayed in Goodfellas are realistically portrayed as violent thugs in cheesy suits. The film is based on the true story of Henry Hill (Robert De Niro), the Irish hood from Brooklyn who masterminded the 1970s multi-million-dollar Air France heist at JFK. In the end, drugs, greed and recklessness bring down this crew of fascinating degenerates. An adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi's 1986 book Wiseguy.

Pulp Fiction  (1994)

     This Quentin Taratino Los Angeles noir classic features a pair of philosophizing hit men (John Travolta and Robert Jackson), a boxer (Bruce Willis) on the lamb because he didn't throw a fight and an underworld crime scene cleanup specialist (Harvey Keitel). The film, comprised of loosely connected episodes told in flashbacks and flashforwards, broke new ground in visual storytelling.

Dead Presidents  (1995)

     This loosely fact-based film is about a group of men returning to the Bronx after combat duty as Marines in Vietnam. The action comes to a head when an armored truck heist goes terribly wrong. The film transforms violence into choreographed art.

The Onion Field  (1979)

      This film adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's 1973 nonfiction book of the same name (Wambaugh also wrote the screenplay) tells the story of the 1963 execution style murder of LAPD officer Ian Campbell. Gregory Ulas Powell and an accomplice abducted Campbell and his partner Karl Hettinger at gunpoint and drove them to an onion field near Bakersfield where Powell murdered Campbell. In 1972 Powell's death sentence was commuted to life. Powell, played in the movie by James Woods, never expressed remorse for the cold-blooded murder. Powell died in prison on August 12, 2012 from prostate cancer. The film, an indictment of the California criminal justice system, makes the time and effort to convict these two killers--endless defense motions, court delays, appeals and the like--a part of the story. Young movie goers today may find this classic film a little slow. 

Training Day  (2001)

     This police drama, covering a single day, follows the on-duty actions of a corrupt LA narcotics cop (Denzel Washington), his crew of dirty officers and a trainee (Ethan Hawk). In this film, except for the trainee who has traded in his uniform for plainclothes, you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys. An unflattering look at Los Angeles, the drug culture, and the cops.

The Firm  (1993)

     A young hotshot lawyer (Tom Cruise) realizes his prestigious Memphis law firm is corrupt and behind the murders of two former law partners. The young lawyer is caught between the FBI and his murderous employer. The film also stars Gene Hackman as the new attorney's legal mentor. A tense Sydney Pollack thriller.

Serpico  (1973)

     The true story of New York Police Officer Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) who blew the whistle on the culture of police corruption in the 1960s and 70s. Serpico's courage led to the Knapp Commission Hearings in 1971 and a series of  police reforms. Based on the nonfiction book of the same title by Peter Maas.

Ronin  (1998)

     An international crime thriller set in France about former special forces operatives and intelligent agents (Robert De Niro et. al.) whose mission involves stealing a mysterious package from a heavily guarded convoy. Some great car chase scenes.

Casino (1995)

     A Martin Scorsese film about the real life Las Vegas casino manager Frank Rosenthal (Robert De Niro) who ran three casinos in the 1970s and 80s. A gripping and vivid adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi's book of the same title, the film depicts Las Vegas during its gangster era. The movie also stars Sharon Stone as De Niro's out-of-control wife. Also starring Joe Pesci as an out-of-control gangster who, like De Niro, comes to a bad end. Both men had outlived their time as Las Vegas moved out of its gangster era.

The Judge James L. Graham Child Pornography Sentencing Case

     In 2007, 67-year-old Richard Bistline lived with his ailing wife in Mount Vernon, a central Ohio town of 17,000 not far from Columbus, the state capital. In October of that year FBI agents went to his home, arrested him for possessing child pornography, then seized his home computer. A search of Bistline's computer revealed 305 images and 56 videos of eight to ten-year-old girls being raped by adult men. Mr.  Bistline had downloaded this material from an online program called "Limewire" which provided access to child pornography without a fee.

     Three years after his arrest Richard Bistline pleaded guilty in a Columbus U. S. District Court to one count of possessing child pornography. The sentencing guidelines for this federal offense, as established by Congress, consisted of a sentence of between 63 and 78 months in prison.

     Assistant United States Attorney Deborah A. Solove, in preparation for Bistline's sentencing hearing before federal judge James L. Graham, submitted a detailed memorandum outlining the government's argument for a sentence that fell within the established guidelines.

     Judge Graham, a 1986 Reagan appointee who was Bistline's age, opened the sentence hearing with statements that telegraphed his decision to be lenient with the child porn possessor. Noting that mere possession of this kind of material did not constitute a very serious offense, Judge Graham declared the federal sentencing guidelines for this crime "seriously flawed." The judge also stated that in determining who should go to prison and who shouldn't the age and health of the convicted person were important considerations. Judge Graham said that he was worried that Mr. Bistline, who over the past decade had suffered two strokes, would not receive adequate health care in prison. Moreover, if he sent this man away, who would care for his sick wife?

     Judge Graham shocked the federal prosecutor when he handed down his sentence of one night in the federal courthouse lockup. That was it. No prison time for a man caught in possession of images and videos of young girls being raped by adult men. Congress and its sentencing guidelines be damned.

     After prosecutor Deborah Solove objected to the sentence as being extremely lenient and outside the bounds of the guidelines, Judge Graham convened a second sentencing hearing two months later. At that hearing the judge simply added ten years of supervised release to his original sentence. Still no prison time for Mr. Bistline.

     Assistant United States Attorney Solove appealed Judge Graham's sentence to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on the grounds the district court judge had improperly rejected the federal sentencing guidelines in this case.

     In January 2012 the panel of three appellate judges handed down its decision. The federal appeals court justices held that a district court judge cannot, without a "compelling" reason, ignore sentencing guidelines created by the U. S. Congress. The justices ruled that in the Bistline case Judge Graham's personal belief that the guidelines were too harsh for the possession of child porn did not constitute a "compelling" reason for ignoring them.

     In justifying this decision, the appellate court laid out the following rationale: "Knowing possession of child pornography...is not a crime of inadvertence, of pop-up [computer] screens and viruses that can incriminate an innocent person. Possession of child pornography instead becomes a crime when a defendant knowingly acquires the images--in this case, affirmatively, deliberately, and repeatedly, hundreds of times over, in a period exceeding a year."

     The 6th Circuit justices noted that Mr. Bistline never expressed genuine remorse for his actions. In fact, the defendant said he didn't understand why the possession of child pornography was even a crime. (Bistline was also angry at FBI agents for seizing his illegally downloaded music along with the child pornography.)

     The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals justices ruled that Judge Graham's sentence "... did not remotely meet the criteria that Congress laid out. We vacate Bistline's sentence and remand his case for prompt imposition of one that does."

     In January 2013, at Bistline's third sentencing hearing, federal prosecutor Solove urged Judge Graham to sentence the defendant to five years in prison. Intent on keeping this man out of prison, Judge Graham sentenced him to three years of home confinement. This sentence was a far cry from the recommended sentence of 63 to 78 months behind bars.

     If Judge Graham believed that the federal sentencing guideline for the possession of child pornography was too harsh, he should have run for Congress on pro-child pornography platform. Otherwise, as a judge, he should have followed the law.

     As of 2023, 84-year-old James L. Graham was still a federal district judge in central Ohio. 

The Walmart Store From Hell

     After graduating from high school in 2008, 18-year-old John Crawford III joined the U.S. Marines. He was discharged shortly after he signed up when military doctors discovered that he suffered from a heart condition.

     In 2014 Mr. Crawford resided in Beavercreek, Ohio, a suburban community outside of Dayton in the western part of the state. On Tuesday evening August 5, 2014, the 23-year-old, his girlfriend Tasha Thomas and his two children from a previous relationship were shopping at the local Walmart to purchase, among other things, the ingredients to make S'mores for an upcoming family cookout.

     The trouble began as John Crawford stood in the sporting section of the store examining a Crossman MK-77 BB/pellet air rifle. A couple of Walmart shoppers saw Crawford holding the air gun in his left hand and called 911. One of the callers, Ronald Ritchie, reported that a man in the store had pointed the gun at two children and was trying to load the weapon.

     When approached by two Beavercreek police officers at 8:26 PM, Mr. Crawford was standing in an aisle away from the sporting section. He was accompanied by his children and on his cellphone talking to their mother, LeeCee Johnson. LeeCee heard her son inform the officers that the gun was not real.

     The police officers ordered Crawford to release the weapon and drop to the floor. As he turned toward them they shot him twice. His children looked on in horror as their father sank to the floor with two bullets in his body.

     A few hours later John Crawford died at a nearby hospital.

     In the panic and confusion immediately following the in-store shooting, Angela Williams, a 37-year-old nursery home worker with a heart condition, collapsed as she scrambled from the violence. Later that night she went into cardiac arrest and died.

     A few days after the fatal police-involved shooting, Beavercreek Police Chief Dennis Evers told reporters that the officers fired their guns when Mr. Crawford failed to obey their command to drop the air rifle.

      John Crawford was shot by officer Sean Williams and Sergeant David Darkow. Both officers were placed on paid administrative leave.

     While the authorities refused to release surveillance camera footage of the shooting to the media, members of the Crawford family and their attorney Michael Wright viewed the video. According to the attorney, the Walmart video revealed that the police officers did not give John Crawford the chance to comply with their orders before shooting him.

     In 2010, one of Mr. Crawford's shooters, officer Sean Williams, shot and killed Scott Brogli, a retired master sergeant with the U.S. Air Force. According to officer Williams and his partner, Brogli had charged them with with a knife while the officers were investigating the 45-year-old's drunken beating of his wife. A local grand jury reviewed the case and decided not to bring charges against officer Williams.

     Two weeks after the Crawford shooting Sergeant David Darkow went back on duty. Office Williams remained on leave.

     On September 7, 2014, The Guardian newspaper published a long article about the John Crawford shooting case. In that piece the reporter included quotes from 911 caller Ronald Ritchie who had changed a crucial component of his initial account of the incident. "At no point," Mr. Ritchie said, "did he [Crawford] shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody." Instead, Ronald Ritchie said Mr. Crawford had merely waved the gun around.

     In his 911 call, Ronald Ritchie told the dispatcher that the man with the gun was trying to load it. The emergency dispatcher, in relaying this information to the responding officers, reported that the Walmart man "just put bullets inside the gun." According to The Guardian the air rifle was not loaded.

     The dead man's father, John Crawford II, having viewed the Walmart surveillance footage, said this to The Guardian reporter: "You can clearly see people in the store walk past him, and they didn't think anything about it. Everybody was just kind of minding their own business. He wasn't acting in any type of way that would have been considered menacing. It was an execution, no doubt about it. It was flat-out murder. And when you see the surveillance camera footage, it will illustrate that."

     Attorney Michael Wright, in discussing the autopsy report with The Guardian reporter revealed that Dr. Robert Shott, the Montgomery County Deputy Coroner, told him that John Crawford had been hit in the back of his left arm just above the elbow. The second bullet entered the side of his torso left of his belly button. According to the attorney, the ballistics evidence supported the theory that when first shot, Mr. Crawford was not facing the officers.

     Montgomery County grand jurors, in 2015, decided not to indict either officer of negligent homicide or lesser offenses. Following this decision, the U.S. Department of Justice conducted an investigation into the shooting. In 2017 the DOJ announced that it was not seeking federal charges against the officers.

     On November 21, 2023 at eight-thirty in the evening, a gunman entered this same Beavercreek Walmart store and shot four people. The shooter (at this writing unidentified) turned the gun on himself, taking his own life. The victims were expected to survive their wounds.

Mayor Bill deBlasio And The Politics of Murder

     A successful politician must do three things well: Raise a lot of money for himself and his family; lie convincingly to constituents; and avoid responsibility or blame for anything that could make him or her look like a political hack. High rates of crime make politicians look bad because to get elected, or re-elected, they promised to reduce it. The politician also hates the commission of a high-profile murder in his or her backyard. When that happens the politician seeks to find someone else to blame. This is the dirty politics of murder.

The Public Housing Elevator Murder Case

     At six in the evening on Sunday, June 1, 2014, 6-year-old Prince Joshua Avitto and his 7-year-old friend Mikayla Capers, residents of a Brooklyn, New York housing project complex called Boulevard Houses, were riding the building's elevator on their way to get some ice cream.

     When the elevator stopped at the lobby and the door opened a heavy-set black man wearing a gray shirt entered the elevator and stabbed the two children, dropped the bloody knife and fled the building. The Avitto boy, stabbed in the torso, lay unconscious and unresponsive. The girl, Mikayla, was stabbed in the chest and had cuts on her hands.

     At the Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center doctors pronounced Prince Avitto dead. His friend, in critical condition, was transferred to New York-Presbyterian Hospital for specialized surgery.

     Unfortunately for homicide detectives the elevator compartment was not equipped with a surveillance camera. Investigators were working off the theory that the man who stabbed the housing project children might be the same person who, on Friday May 30, 2014, had stabbed 18-year-old Tanaya Copeland to death. That homicide had been committed just a few blocks from the housing project. The unidentified perpetrator in the Tanaya Copeland case had left the murder knife at that crime scene as well.

     On Tuesday, June 3, 2014 New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio, appearing before reporters gathered at a press conference blamed the housing authority bureaucracy for failing to install surveillance cameras in the housing project elevators. The mayor specifically pointed his finger at his predecessor, Mayor Bloomberg.

     Since politicians create bureaucracy this criticism was rather ironic. Moreover, while surveillance video is an excellent investigative tool, the presence of a camera in the elevator would not have prevented the stabbings.

     On Wednesday, June 4, 2014, at eight o'clock in the evening, New York City detectives arrested 27-year-old Daniel St. Hubert as a suspect in the elevator stabbing case. According to a police spokesperson Mr. Hubert had a criminal history. He was on parole in connection with a domestic dispute assault conviction.

     Because Mayor deBlasio couldn't blame guns in this case he blamed the housing authority and the former mayor. Maybe he should have blamed himself as a big government politician who reveled in bureaucracy. Or better yet, he could have blamed the man with the knife.

     In the end the mayor did not blame the Avitto boy's death on failed mental health care or a dysfunctional criminal justice system. He and his supporters blamed his murder on "society." It was our fault.  

     In April 2018 a jury sitting in Brooklyn found St. Hubert guilty of murder and attempted murder. The judge sentenced him to 50 years to life. 

     Bill deBlasio is no longer mayor of New York and crime there is even worse. The politician who replaced Mr. deBlasio also promised to reduce crime in the city. As it turned out the new guy isn't any better than the hack he replaced. 

Natasha Vanwasshenova: The Perils of Prostitution

     On November 23, 2010 Jonathan Hood, a resident of Rochester, Michigan, called a Dearborn escort service and requested a hooker and $80 worth of heroin. The 38-year-old John, in the midst of a divorce, was under the influence of alcohol and heroin when 28-year-old Natasha Vanwasshenova arrived at Hood's suburban Detroit home with the requested drug.

     After consuming more heroin and booze Mr. Hood and the prostitute soaked in his hot tub for 30 minutes after which he took a cold shower. While having sex with Vanwasshenova shortly thereafter, Mr. Hood died. After she called 911 Natasha Vanwasshenova tried to revive Mr. Hood then waited for the EMS personnel and the police.

      The forensic pathologist with the Oakland County Medical Examiner's office who performed the autopsy ruled that Jonathan Hood had died of a heroin overdose. The forensic pathologist noted that Mr. Hood had an enlarged heart and significant blockage in one of his arteries.

     Since according to this forensic pathologist Vanwasshenova's heroin killed Mr. Hood, a local prosecutor charged her with delivering a drug that caused the user's death. Arrested on this criminal homicide offense, Vanwasshenova if found guilty faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.

     Sitting in her Oakland County jail cell Vanwasshenova must have wondered how having sex with a 38-year-old man had killed him and why she was being held responsible for his death. Heroin, while not good for you was not arsenic. Had she known the authorities would charge her for causing her trick's demise she might not have stuck around for the police.

     Vanwasshenova's court appointed attorney Charles Toby, when he read the autopsy report, wondered why the forensic pathologist hadn't taken Mr. Hood's enlarged heart and blocked artery into consideration in the cause of death ruling. With that in mind attorney Toby asked Dr. Kirit Patel, the Chief Cardiologist at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, to review the autopsy. Dr. Patel, after reading the police and autopsy reports, concluded that Jonathan Hood had died of "acute coronary thrombosis," not a heroin overdose. His weak heart had failed under the stress of the drug, booze, hot tub, cold shower and sex.

     In light of Dr. Patel's post-mortem analysis the local prosecutor reduced the charge against Vanwasshenova to delivering a controlled substance. Oakland County medical examiner Dr. Ljubisa Dragovic amended Mr. Hood's cause of death to heart attack.

     In May 2012, after spending 14 months in the county jail, Natasha Vanwasshenova pleaded guilty to the drug delivery charge. She also apologized to Mr. Hood's relatives who were in the courtroom. Judge Leo Bowan sentenced her to two years probation and ordered her released from custody.

     Attorney Charles Toby, noting that his client had been in jail for 14 months on a minor drug crime, objected to the probated sentence. If Vanwasshenova returned to prostitution she would violate the terms of her probation, and if caught could end up serving the rest of her drug delivery sentence behind bars. Perhaps her experience with Mr. Hood would point Vanwasshenova, the mother of four, in another direction, career-wise.

Free Speech Versus the Right Not To Be Threatened

     Anthony Elonis, an employee at an amusement park in Allentown Pennsylvania was upset when his wife Tara left him in May 2010. The couple had two children.

     In October 2010, fuming over his wife's departure, Mr. Elonis posted the following message on Facebook: "If I only knew then what I know now…I would have smothered your [his wife's] ass with a pillow, dumped your body in the back seat, dropped you off in Toad Creek and made it look like rape and murder." Later he wrote: "There's one way to love ya but a thousand ways to kill ya. I'm not gonna rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts."

     On November 4, 2010 Tara Elonis, fearful of what her estranged husband might do to her, convinced a judge to issue a protection order against him. Three days later on Facebook he responded with more threats. In the context of discussing the federal law that made it a crime to threaten the president of the United States, Anthony Elonis wrote: "I also found out that it's incredibly illegal…to go on Facebook and say something like the best place to fire a mortar launcher at a house would be from the cornfield behind it because of easy access to a getaway road and you'd have a clear line of sight through the sunroom."

     Elonis illustrated his Facebook posting with a map of the proposed mortar assault and his estranged wife's house. "Art," he wrote, "is about pushing the limits. I'm willing to go to jail for my constitutional rights. Are You?"

     About this time Mr. Elonis also used Facebook to threaten his fellow employees at the amusement park. He published a Halloween photograph of himself holding a fake knife to a co-worker's throat. He captioned the image: "I wish."

     Elonis' boss, after seeing the Facebook post fired Elonis and reported him to the FBI.

     A federal prosecutor charged Anthony Elonis under a law that made using the Internet to threaten another person with harm a crime. The case went to trial in 2011 and resulted in Elonis' conviction.

     During Elonis' three year stretch in federal prison his attorney filed a First Amendment appeal arguing that the federal government had violated his client's right to free speech.

     The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Elonis' First Amendment challenge. Under federal case law so-called "true threats" are not protected as free speech. To constitute a criminal act the threat does not have to be carried out. Moreover, prosecutors do not have to prove an intent to carry out the threat. 

     In a 2003 Supreme Court decision Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the law was intended to protect people "from the fear of violence and from the disruption that fear engenders."

     At his criminal trial in 2011 Elonis' attorney argued that threats alone are not harmful and that they therefore come under the protection of the First Amendment. Elonis took the stand on his own behalf and testified that he had not made a "true threat" against his estranged wife because he didn't have any intention of hurting her. In justifying his Facebook threats he said, "This was for me therapeutic." He said it helped him deal with the pain of losing his wife.

     The victim, Tara Elonis, took the stand for the prosecution and said, "I felt like I was being stalked. I felt extremely afraid for me, my children and the lives of other family members."

     The principal constitutional issue before the Supreme Court involved who's rights should be protected--the people who issued the threats or the people who were threatened. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) weighed in on Elonis' behalf. Attorneys for the activist group wanted a higher legal standard for the criminalization of speech to avoid sending people to prison over misunderstandings. The ACLU asked the court to make speech a crime only when the prosecutor could establish a clear intent to carry out the threat.

     On June 1, 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision on First Amendment grounds, reversed the Elonis conviction. 

Alan Randall: Bad People Belong in Prison

     During the winter of 1974, 16-year-old Alan A. Randall committed more than a dozen burglaries in and around Summit, Wisconsin, a town of 4,000 in Waukesha County. In January 1975 he broke into the Summit Police Department. When officers Wayne Olson and Robert Atkins pulled up to police headquarters in their patrol car, Alan Randall, instead of either giving himself up or making a run for it, opened fire on the officers, killing them both. The burglar-turned cop killer drove from the scene in the dead officers' bullet-ridden police vehicle. That night he committed another burglary then went home to bed.

     Tried as an adult two years later the jury found Alan Randall guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. (He had also been charged with murdering his neighbor, a man named Ronald Hoeft. Due to procedural problems with the prosecution in the Hoeft killing, that case was dropped.) Because Randall's attorney had raised the defense of legal insanity the trial went into a second phase centered around the issue of his mental state at the time of the murders. The jury, having heard testimony from psychiatrists who diagnosed Randall of having a personality disorder, found him not guilty by reason of insanity.

     Today a criminal defendant with a so-called personality disorder would not be adjudged legally insane because people with this disorder are not psychotic or in any way delusional. They are fully aware of what they have done and know that the act of murder is wrong. In other words, these defendants are not insane, they are bad. Ted Bundy had a personality disorder, John Hinckley was mentally ill.

     Having been declared legally insane, Alan Randall, rather than being sent to prison for a specific period of time was packed off to a mental institution for an indefinite period. He would be eligible for release when psychiatrists said he was cured of his mental illness. Since Randall was not insane he was at least in theory eligible for release the day they admitted him into the Central State Hospital in northeast Wisconsin.

     In 1980 doctors took Randall off his anti-psychotic medication. A model patient--the best mental patients are the ones who aren't insane--Mr. Randall was transferred to the Mendota Mental Institution in Madison where he was allowed to work full time at an art gallery.

     In 1989 Alan Randall's attorney began petitioning the court for his release on grounds the patient had been cured of the mental illness that had caused him to commit the murders fourteen years earlier. Randall's psychiatrists dropped the personality disorder diagnosis and considered him sane and ready to re-enter society.

   In 1990 and 1991 judges denied Randall's quest for freedom. In 1992, psychiatrists who had plenty of real mental patients to deal with stopped spending time with him altogether.

      Alan Randall lost another bid for freedom in 1995. Finally, in April 2013, after 36 years in a mental institution a six-member jury recommended that the 54-year-old cop killer be released back into society. Since Mr. Randall had not been sent to the mental institution to be punished, the issue wasn't whether he had been punished enough. Because he wasn't crazy he didn't belong in a mental institution in the first place.

    While Alan Randall's release order did not create public outrage, some of the murder victims' relatives said they were disappointed. A widow of one of the murdered officers told reporters that in her opinion Mr. Randall, who had never publicly apologized for the murders, was not contrite. Waukesha District Attorney Brad Schimel said there was no basis upon which the state could appeal the jury's recommendation to free Mr. Randall.

     Alan Randall's attorney Craig Powell assured reporters that his client posed no threat to the community. "He's a much different person now than when he was a kid." Had Alan Randall been sentenced to prison in 1977 instead of being committed to a mental institution he would have been eligible for parole as early as 1992.

     In September 2013, Alan Randall, the cop killer who lived 36 years in an insane asylum, became a free man. 

The Stiletto Heel Murder Case

     Dr. Alf Stefan Anderson, a native of Sweden, joined the staff of the University of Houston in December 2009 as a full-time research professor specializing in women's reproductive health. In 2013 he resided on the 18th floor of a luxury high-rise condo in the city's museum district. The 59-year-old professor had an on-again off-again relationship with Ana Trujillo, a 44-year-old Mexican native.

     Dr. Anderson and Trujillo got into an argument on the night of June 8, 2013 while having drinks at a nightclub in Houston. In the taxi on the way back to his condo she was still angry and yelling at him. The fight had started when another man at the bar offered to buy her a drink.

     At four o'clock that morning Ana Trujillo called 911 from Dr. Anderson's high-rise dwelling. Responding police officers and paramedic personnel were met at the door by Trujillo whose clothing and hands were covered in blood. The professor was lying on his back in the hallway with twenty to twenty-five puncture wounds in his face, arms and neck. He was unresponsive.

     Next to Dr. Anderson's punctured head lay a bloody blue suede woman's shoe with six-inch stiletto heels. This was the weapon that had caused the wounds and presumably killed the professor.

     Trujillo told the officers she had stabbed her boyfriend with the size-nine pump after he'd grabbed her and wrestled her to the ground. Unable to breathe she attacked him with the shoe in self defense.

     Police officers took Trujillo into custody at the scene. Later that day a Harris County prosecutor charged her with capital murder. Following a short period behind bars the murder suspect posted her $100,000 bail and was released.

     The Trujillo trial opened in late March 2014. In his opening remarks the prosecutor told the jury that the defendant, in a fit of rage, had attacked the victim causing him to fall backward and injure himself. As he lay helpless on the condo floor she sat on him and from that position gave it to him with the stiletto shoe. At one point she tried to stop him from breathing by applying pressure to his neck.

     The prosecutor portrayed the professor as a mild-mannered guy and the defendant as a hothead.

     The defense attorney argued that his client had acted in self defense against an alcohol-fueled assault. Dr. Lee Ann Grossberg, a private forensic pathologist took the stand for the defense. The witness had reviewed death scene photographs, the autopsy report, police documents and medical records pertaining to the case. According to the expert witness, "I did not see any one injury that would have been fatal to Dr. Anderson. Natural causes may have contributed to his death."

     The defense pathologist testified that if the responding officers and medical crew had performed CPR on Dr. Anderson, or at least used an electronic monitor to measure his heart activity, they may have saved his life.

     Without a confession, surveillance footage of the altercation or an eyewitness account, the stiletto murder represented the classic circumstantial case. The jurors, based on the interpretation of the death scene--particularly the number and nature of the puncture wounds, the unusual murder weapon as well as other circumstances of the case--would have to infer the defendant's guilt. In other words, if murder in this case seemed more reasonable that self-defense, Ana Trujillo would go to prison.

     On April 8, 2014 the jury found the defendant guilty as charged. Ana Trujillo showed little emotion as the verdict was read. She faced up to life behind bars.

     The punishment phase of the Trujillo trial began the day following the guilty verdict. A police officer testified that Trujillo had been arrested twice for drunken driving. A former security guard took the stand and described how Trujillo had once attacked him. Another witness told jurors that Trujillo had broken into his apartment.

     Ana Trujillo took the stand at her sentencing hearing and said, "I never meant to hurt him. It was never my intent. I loved him. I wanted to get away." Following her testimony the defense attorney asked the judge to send his client to prison for two years.

     On April 11, 2014 the trial judge sentenced the 45-year-old Ana Trujillo to life in prison.