Dan Markel

Daniel Eric Markel (October 9, 1972 – July 19, 2014) was a Canadian-born attorney and a law professor, who wrote various works on retribution in criminal law and sentencing, with a focus on the role of punishment in the criminal justice system.

A native of Toronto, he earned a J.D. degree from Harvard University in 2001 and after working as a law clerk to a federal judge and as an associate at a law firm, joined the faculty of Florida State University in 2005.

While on a Dorot Fellowship in Israel, Markel completed graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned a master's degree in political theory from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, before receiving his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2001.

Before entering teaching, Markel served as law clerk to Judge Michael Daly Hawkins of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was an associate with the law firm Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel in Washington, D.C., practicing white-collar criminal defense.

His work at the firm included representing a group of law professors in an amicus brief in a criminal case before the Ninth Circuit.

Markel joined the faculty of the Florida State University College of Law in 2005; he was tenured in 2010.

Markel held the post of D'Alemberte Professor of Law at the FSU College of Law.

Markel co-authored a book exploring the intersection between crime, punishment and family, Privilege or Punish: Criminal Justice and the Challenge of Family Ties (2009).

Markel was a co-founder of a blog for law professors, PrawfsBlawg.

His law review articles included an argument for the abolition of the death penalty published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, a critique of the use of shaming as punishment published in the Vanderbilt Law Review, and a paper on punitive damages published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.

Also interested in sports law, he and his co-authors proposed a method of giving fans an opportunity to participate in the management of sports teams.

He also wrote opinion pieces for The New York Times, Slate, and the Atlantic, among other publications.

In addition to his scholarship, he was a consultant for the defense in a federal prosecution in New Jersey involving rabbis accused of extortion by the FBI.

Markel was murdered in Tallahassee, Florida, in 2014, in a murder for hire motivated by child custody issues following Markel's divorce from Wendi Adelson, a clinical law professor and child advocate also employed at Florida State University at the time.

Wendi Adelson has not been charged, but she has been named, together with her brother Charlie and mother Donna, as "conspirators" in the killing.

Four individuals have been convicted in the case.

Luis Rivera pled guilty to murder, and was sentenced to 19 years in jail.

Sigfredo Garcia was found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, and sentenced to life in prison.

After a mistrial was declared in her original trial, Katherine Magbanua was found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder in her retrial; she was sentenced to life in prison plus two consecutive 30-year sentences.

Charlie Adelson, Wendi Adelson's brother, was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder.

On Tuesday, December 12, 2023, Charlie Adelson was sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder plus an additional 30 years each for the conspiracy and solicitation convictions.

Donna Adelson, Markel's former mother-in-law, was arrested at the Miami International Airport on a warrant from Leon County, apparently trying to flee to Vietnam, a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S. She is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder.

Daniel Eric Markel was born in Montreal and raised in Toronto in a religious Jewish family.

He studied politics and philosophy as a Harvard undergraduate, graduating magna cum laude.

Markel was shot at his home in Tallahassee, Florida, shortly before 11 a.m. on July 18, 2014, and died early the next day.

The Tallahassee Police Department announced that Markel was the "intended victim" and termed his death a murder.

On August 1, 2014, the Associated Press reported that emergency medical response was delayed because a dispatcher erroneously classified the call as less serious than it was.

A highly regarded and popular professor, Markel was the subject of many tributes from the academic community.

The day after his death, a memorial service was held at the synagogue he had attended, Congregation Shomrei Torah, in Tallahassee.

Markel was buried in Pardes Shalom Cemetery in Maple, Ontario.

A $25,000 Crime Stoppers reward was initially offered.

The affidavit revealed investigators' belief that Garcia and Luis Rivera, 33, had traveled from the Miami area in a rented Toyota Prius, staying in motels the nights of July 16 and 17, 2014, to commit the crime.

Evidence included a cellphone, banking and SunPass electronic toll collection records; security camera footage from buildings and city buses along the streets Markel and the alleged killers had driven, and the testimony of an unnamed informant along with a nearby witness.

The morning of the killing, they had trailed Markel as he ran errands and went to the gym, until they could shoot him at his home.

A separate, independently funded $100,000 award was offered in July 2015.

At that time, the one-year anniversary of the murder, the Tallahassee Police Department called a press conference and showed photographs of a silver pine mica Toyota Prius, asking the public for help in locating the vehicle.

The police also released unredacted police reports from the crime scene in February 2016, but these contained no new information regarding the crime, only the names of police officers who visited the crime scene.

On May 26, 2016, a suspect, Sigfredo Garcia, 34, of Miami Beach, was arrested for first-degree murder based on a warrant issued by a Leon County judge.

Tallahassee police would not release further details, but told reporters that the killing was being investigated as a murder for hire, and sources said that they expected more arrests in the case.

A few days later, a judge in Leon County court ordered the probable cause affidavit behind the arrest unsealed.