{"id":6818,"date":"2012-04-09T10:06:58","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T15:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=6818"},"modified":"2012-04-09T10:06:58","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T15:06:58","slug":"annals-of-law-part-3-of-a-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=6818","title":{"rendered":"Annals of law (part 3 of a series)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can a legally dead man be tried, convicted, and sentenced to the death penalty?<\/p>\n<p>If this was a movie with Ashley Judd (perhaps as a sexy public defender), it would probably gross $200 million at least.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, it isn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Steven Sanders was declared &#8220;legally dead&#8221; in 1994. His family brought the action, claiming Sanders had abandoned them in 1987.<\/p>\n<p>The thing is, he wasn&#8217;t actually dead dead:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nation\/nationnow\/la-na-nn-legally-dead-man-death-penalty-201204092012,0,2970398.story\">Sanders was unquestionably alive, living and working at odd jobs across four southeastern states and Nevada, and reportedly racking up a number of traffic tickets and a sentencing in Georgia for simple battery.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nation\/nationnow\/la-na-nn-legally-dead-man-death-penalty-201204092012,0,2970398.story\">Now he&#8217;s suspected of killing a 12-year-old girl and her mother.<\/a> He&#8217;s apparently confessed, but his lawyers are trying to get the confession thrown out because Sanders asked for a lawyer first.<\/p>\n<p>One thing is certain: somebody&#8217;s going to get a book deal out of this case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can a legally dead man be tried, convicted, and sentenced to the death penalty? If this was a movie with Ashley Judd (perhaps as a sexy public defender), it would probably gross $200 million at least. Unfortunately, it isn&#8217;t. Thomas Steven Sanders was declared &#8220;legally dead&#8221; in 1994. His family brought the action, claiming Sanders [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clippings","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6819,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818\/revisions\/6819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}