Meghan may have suffered a legal blow but this is only round one in what looks set to be a messy courtroom skirmish. Here is what you need to know.
It should have been one of the most dramatic days in recent royal history. On April 24, a horde of the UK’s legal superstars should have descended on London’s High Court for the start of what will be one of the most closely watched, potentially damaging, legal stoushes in recent history.
On one side, Associated Newspapers, the parent company of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, and on the other, Meghan Duchess of Sussex.
It was expected to be a dramatic day.
Instead, the preliminary hearing in the case played out via Microsoft Teams with hordes of journalists signing in to witness the first round in this courtroom confrontation.
Despite the fact that it was 3.30am in Los Angeles, Meghan and husband Harry Duke of Sussex are also reported to have watched proceedings unfold.
Lawyers for Shkreli, who is in federal prison, claim he has “devoted countless hours” to researching a cure.
Lawyers for “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli asked a federal judge Wednesday to release him from prison so he can help find a cure for COVID-19, the disease associated with the coronavirus, court records show.
Shkreli is serving a seven-year sentence at a federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, after being convicted in 2017 on securities fraud and conspiracy charges. His lawyers asked in the filing that he be allowed to serve the rest of his term at home with an electronic monitor.
For better or worse, Tiger King has captured the internet’s attention with larger-than-life characters and salacious murder allegations. Netflix’s documentary series hit at just the right time, and it seems like everyone is talking about Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin. The streaming service is dropping another episode on Sunday — a wrap-up show hosted by Joel McHale — but if Tiger King has you jonesing for more bizarre true-crime stories, there’s a practical avalanche of options, both on Netflix and beyond.
While Netflix seems to be churning out a new true crime series every day, other streaming services have their share of excellent documentaries. To help you narrow down your options, we’ve rounded up 10 of the best documentary series about shocking, sad, or just plain strange crimes available to stream right now.
THE CASE AGAINST ADNAN SYED
The podcast Serial was a phenomenon that kicked off a true-crime wave. Public discourse around the questions that host Sarah Koenig raised about convicted murderer Adnan Syed’s guilt or innocence was so compelling that a Baltimore state court reopened the 1999 case. HBO’s 2019 documentary reexamines the crime over four episodes, with new interviews, a larger focus on the murdered high-schooler, Hae Min Lee, and an update on developments in Syed’s appeals.
The Case Against Adnan Syed is streaming on HBO. (Also available as an Amazon or Hulu add-on.)
DON’T F**K WITH CATS
If the animal exploitation exposed in Tiger King was too much for you to handle, you may want to skip Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer. The Netflix documentary focuses on amateur internet sleuths who investigate a disturbing video in which a man is seen torturing and killing two kittens. But if you can stomach it (the documentary doesn’t show the actual torture,) the story is a wild ride.
The story of a bizarre 2003 bank robbery known as “the pizza bomber heist” is explored in the four-part Netflix documentary, Evil Genius. The titular evil genius is Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, whose plan to send a pizza delivery driver into a bank with a bomb strapped to his chest is just one part of an elaborate conspiracy. Produced by Mark and Jay Duplass (who also produced Netflix’s Wild Wild Country,) Evil Genius explores the strange case 15 years later.
Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary (all four episodes dropped on April 1) tells the story of Sonja Farak, a Massachusetts crime lab employee who was arrested in 2013 for sampling the drugs she was supposed to be processing. The personal drama is interesting enough — why would an successful woman jeopardize her important career by experimenting with meth? — but the systemic issues it raises are even more troubling. After Farak’s arrest, incarcerated felons whose convictions were based on evidence that her lab processed tried to have their cases reexamined. The documentary explores both sides of the story, complete with courtroom reenactments.
How to Fix a Drug Scandal is streaming on Netflix.
While most everyone in America is sheltering in place in fear of coronavirus, some celebrities behind bars, such Bill Cosby and R. Kelly, are pressing to be released from lockups where they fear the killer virus is raging or soon will be.
On Wednesday, the 23-year-old Brooklyn rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine (real name Daniel Hernandez), who suffers from asthma and once was hospitalized for bronchitis, was released from a federal prison to serve the remaining four months of his two-year racketeering sentence in home confinement, according to Nicholas Biase, spokesman for the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
“The government did not oppose counsel’s motion for compassionate release because the defendant’s medical condition placed him at high risk during the coronavirus outbreak,” Biase said in a statement emailed to USA TODAY.
Dawn Florio, one of his lawyers, confirmed his release to USA TODAY and said the rapper and his legal team were “super excited – ecstatic” about the news.
Unlike the vigilantes he played in his movies, Steven Seagal is not above the law — at least according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Seagal, the former action-movie star turned would-be musician, will pay more than $300,000 to settle charges that he failed to disclose he was being paid to promote a cryptocurrency investment, the SEC said Thursday.
Seagal, 67, did not tell his millions of social media followers that Bitcoiin2Gen had promised him $250,000 in cash and $750,000 worth of its tokens before promoting its initial coin offering on Twitter and Facebook, according to the SEC. Under the settlement, Seagal agreed to pay the SEC more than $330,000 in penalties and interest, including $157,000 that Bitcoiin2Gen had already paid him.
