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Wife of Bay Area Defense Lawyer Murdered

By Last Night in Little Rock, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Sun Oct 16, 2005 at 04:32:41 PM EST
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by Last Night in Little Rock

The wife of prominent Oakland criminal defense attorney and TV legal commentator Daniel Horowitz was found murdered in their home yesterday evening. Horowitz was four days into the murder trial of Susan Polk at the time of the murder. (The San Francisco Examiner and the Oakland Tribune had no stories about the murder today. The Contra Costa Times had this article. For a summary of the "sensational" Polk trial to date, go the Tribune's website and enter "Horowitz" or "Susan Polk" in the archives search.) Horowitz is a frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, and he was regularly seen during the Peterson trial.

As defense lawyers, we all know the drill: If the victim is married, the spouse is automatically 50% a suspect by that fact alone. The nature of the Polk case from the Tribune's archives does not seem on the surface like a case where someone is getting even with defense counsel, but Mr. Horowitz's job will be to paint the victim in an extremely bad light, which he did in the opening statement, which is linked above. That could produce invective for defense counsel from the victim's family and friends. This is all our worst nightmare.

My best wishes to Mr. Horowitz, whom I once met, in his time of loss and grief.

[cross-posted at Law of Criminal Defense.]

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    Wife of Bay Area Defense Lawyer Murdered | 1 comment (1 topical)
    Re: Wife of Bay Area Defense Lawyer Murdered (none / 0) (#1)
    by roger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:05:04 PM EST
    How terrible! I think that all defense lawyers live in fear of something like this happening. We all have guns, some have dogs, and we have all been threatened at some point. I hope that they catch whoever did this, though it wont help anything, in the end. Poor guy

    Wife of Bay Area Defense Lawyer Murdered | 1 comment (1 topical)