Dan Markel

Early life and education

Daniel Eric Markel was born and raised in Toronto.

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

Legal career

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.

Markel joined 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.

Work

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.

Murder

Markel was shot at his home in Tallahassee, Florida shortly before 11 a.m. on July 18, 2014, and died early the next day. He was talking on the phone as he pulled into his garage, and said that he saw someone in his driveway. 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 is buried in Pardes Shalom Cemetery in Maple, Ontario.

A $25,000 CrimeStoppers reward was initially offered. 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 Silva-Mica Toyota Prius, asking the public for help in locating the vehicle. The police also released un-redacted 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.

2016 developments

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. 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 cellular phone, 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.

The affidavit further outlined investigators' theory that Markel's death was a contract killing, since neither of the accused knew Markel, and no property was taken. The motive was believed to be the desire of the family of Wendi Adelson, Markel's ex-wife, to allow her to relocate to the Miami area with the children. She had been granted 50-50 custody when the couple's acrimonious divorce had been finalized in 2013, when Markel had won an order prohibiting her from moving to Miami with the children. Markel filed a motion in 2014 that would have prohibited his mother-in-law from being alone and unsupervised with the children due to alleged disparaging remarks about their father. Investigators alleged Adelson's brother, who reportedly disliked Markel, was in a "personal relationship" with Garcia's ex-wife. Garcia's ex-wife was the first call Garcia dialed after Markel was murdered.

A grand jury in Leon County indicted Garcia and Rivera on charges of first-degree murder in connection with Markel's killing on June 17, 2016. Rivera had been jailed on unrelated federal charges since 2014; he pleaded guilty in federal court in Fort Lauderdale to racketeering conspiracy arising from his leadership of the North Miami group of the Latin Kings gang, was sentenced to more than 12 ½ years' imprisonment, and is currently incarcerated at the Coleman federal prison in central Florida.

The state filed documentation with the court. This included detailed information on Rivera and Garcia's first trip to Tallahassee on June 4–6, 2014, including an exhaustive review of cellular phone and GPS records placing them in the vicinity of Markel on both trips, and an expanded probable cause affadivit which included photographs and maps related to the murder. The media released videos of the Toyota Prius stalking Markel throughout Tallahassee on July 18, 2014. Sigfredo Garcia was pictured in a Toyota Prius at an ATM in Pembroke Pines, wearing a white long-sleeved dress shirt. Media reports using the released videos showed that immediately after the murder, video from a Tallahassee Bus ("Suspects Passes Bus"), showed the Prius going North on Thomasville Road with an individual in the passenger side changing into a long-sleeved white shirt.

Personal life

Markel married Wendi Jill Adelson in February 2006. They had two sons, one born in 2009 and one in 2010. Adelson left the marriage and the couple separated in 2012. Their divorce became final in 2013.