Drama and scorn ran rampant in a Michigan courtroom on Friday, where a convicted killer was shouted down by his victim’s family members before he could tender some formal condolences.

In June 2023, Sekou Conde, 24, repeatedly shot and killed Donrell Canda, 24, inside his own home – in front of the slain man’s son and girlfriend, according to the Ann Arbor Police Department.

In February, the defendant was convicted by a jury of his peers on all counts against him, including one count each of premeditated murder in the first degree, felony murder, and first-degree home invasion, as well as two counts of possession of a firearm during a felony.

On Friday, Washtenaw County Trial Court Judge Carol Kuhnke sentenced Conde to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A notorious gang leader from Los Angeles who has been accused and linked to nine separate murders — three that he was found guilty of carrying out — had his convictions and death sentence overturned last week by the California Supreme Court.

Timothy McGhee, 51, was originally convicted and sentenced in 2009 for three murders and the attempted murders of two police officers. He was once on the U.S. Marshals most-wanted list after disappearing in 2001. Police captured him in 2003 in Arizona.

The three murder convictions that McGhee had overturned were reported between 1997 and 2001, with authorities suspecting that McGhee used violence and his influence as a leader for the Toonerville gang — which has existed in LA since the 1950s, according to the Los Angeles Times — to control the drug trade and intimidate people in neighborhoods surrounding Los Feliz Boulevard between the Los Angeles River and San Fernando Boulevard.

One of the victims, Ronnie Martin, 25, was allegedly shot 28 times by McGhee and several other members of the Toonerville gang. Another victim named Ryan Gonzalez, 17, was gunned down in 2000. The third was killed in 2001.

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Criminal Justice

Lawyer convicted in fatal shooting of man who attacked him in law firm parking lot

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 10, 2025, 10:07 am CDT

A Connecticut lawyer was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter Friday for fatally shooting a man who attacked him in the parking lot of his law firm.

Robert L. Fisher Jr., 78, of Connecticut was convicted after jurors deliberated for three hours, report Law360, CT Insider and the Register Citizen.

Connecticut law imposes a “duty to retreat” before using force that can cause death or serious injury, according to the Register Citizen and a previous Connecticut Insider story. The duty applies only when a person can safely retreat and is outside the home or the office.

The state does not have a stand-your-ground law, which allows the use of deadly force without a duty to retreat, even outside the home or the workplace, when a person reasonably thinks that it is necessary to prevent death or serious injury.

The June 2021 incident began, Fisher had testified, when Matthew Bromley pulled him from his car and began punching him, claiming that the lawyer had “ruined my life,” according to CT Insider. Then Bromley spit in his face, according to Fisher’s testimony, described by CT Insider.

“I was in fear,” Fisher said. “He was so impossibly angry his face was contorted with rage. I have never seen anything like it. I undid my seat belt and kicked him, so he would be farther away. … I got out of the car to face him. … He charged me in the chest. He was shouting. ‘I am going to kill you.’”

Fisher, who was 74 years old at the time of the incident, said he fired his gun when Bromley charged toward him and reached for his arm. Prosecutors said Fisher could have retreated to his car and locked the door, rather than shoot Bromley.

Prosecutors had cited eyewitness accounts that Fisher stepped forward from his car’s open door before shooting. The forward step showed that the shooting was in revenge for the attack, rather than self-protection, the prosecution claimed.

In his closing argument, Litchfield County State’s Attorney David Shannon described what he thought that Fisher could have been thinking, according to Law360.

“How dare this little man in his beat-up old Saab, wearing his wife beater tank top and his cargo shorts, assault him?” Shannon said. “How dare he [Bromley] do that? He [Fisher] was going to refuse to be a victim. That’s what happened here.”

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A Georgia jury this week convicted a man who skipped a court hearing and spent more than a year on the run avoiding charges that he murdered his wife in front of their young children in 2017.

Jonathan Bates was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife Cynde Bates, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB report. He also was convicted of manslaughter, aggravated assault and cruelty to children.

As Law&Crime previously reported, the Dawson Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Marshals Service arrested Bates in April. A bench warrant has been out for Bates’ arrest ever since he failed to show up to a court hearing in October 2022, records show.

Bates is accused of killing his wife Cynde Bates, 28, at their home in Dallas, Georgia, in May 2017. According to his indictment, he allegedly pushed her, causing her to fall and hit her head on a love seat. The incident allegedly happened in front of the couple’s children, ages 4 and 7.

Left: Deontray Flanagan during his murder trial (KHOU/YouTube). Zevaya Flanagan (Allen Dave Funeral Homes).

“You may have taken last breath, but you cannot kill her spirit, her memory, or her name,” her grandfather Curtis Watson told local CBS affiliate KHOU.

More from Law&Crime: ‘I’m going to f— y’all’: YouTuber allegedly abducts 2 women and takes them on high-speed car ride while wielding gun and praying with them

Flanagan’s apparent propensity for violence continued in the courtroom as he attacked a KHOU news camera, shoving it to the ground and injuring a photojournalist, before the verdict. Several court deputies tackled Flanagan to the ground to restrain him.

During the three-day trial, the jury saw a video of the girl’s mother, Kairsten Watson, watching her daughter die from the back of a police cruiser.

“Please stop – that is our daughter,” she pleaded in the video, according to a courtroom report from the Houston Chronicle.

She testified about how she felt helpless.

“There was nothing I could do about it,” she reportedly said.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Watson described the terrifying call in an interview with a local TV station in the days after the murder.

“Her face was just covered in blood,” she told Fox affiliate KRIV. “He hit her with something really hard, and then he called me on FaceTime, and he showed me. He choked her on FaceTime. I said, ‘Tray stop, that is your daughter, stop, she loves you.’ His exact words were you only love that man, you did this to her.”

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Wife convicted of murdering prominent attorney husband claimed to reveal real killer at her sentencing

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 9, 2024, 1:04 pm CST

A Georgia woman convicted of murdering and burning the body of her husband, a prominent Atlanta-area attorney, was sentenced to life in prison after a Dec. 5 sentencing hearing in which she claimed that the real killer was the man’s son.

Melody Walker Farris, 64, of Georgia was convicted last month for the 2018 murder of lawyer Gary Wayne Farris, who was the 58-year-old managing partner of the Atlanta office of midsize law firm Burr & Forman at the time of his death, Law360 reports.

Gary Wayne Farris was the chair of Burr & Forman’s lending practice and a member of the executive committee, the article reports. He was a graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law.

Publications with coverage besides Law360 include Court TV, WXIA-TV, Courthouse News Service, Fox 5 Atlanta and the Independent.

Witnesses said Farris had two affairs before her husband’s death at their farm in Alpharetta, Georgia. She and her husband had also argued about money, and she stood to benefit if he died, prosecutors said. The Independent cited a report by the Cherokee Tribune & Ledger News that Farris was the beneficiary of a $2 million life insurance policy.

During the sentencing hearing, Farris said she has kept the real killer’s identity secret for six years. Courthouse News Service reported on her words.

“I want the world to know who did this. Not only did I not do this, I know who did,” Farris said. “I know Scott killed his father.”

Farris said her mother had advised her to take the blame for the killing, but she would no longer protect her son Scott Farris. Farris said she saw Scott Farris coming from the burn pile, where the remains had been found, and described other circumstances that she found suspicious.

The defense previously suggested that Scott Farris could be involved in the murder because he was missing a gun that had the same kind of bullets used in the killing, according to Courthouse News. Defense lawyer Michael Ray said investigators did not search for evidence in Scott Farris’ room, which was filthy in contrast to his spotless bathroom.

Investigators first thought that Gary Wayne Farris may have fallen onto the burn pile during a medical emergency. They later found a bullet in his rib cage.