Bonnie Garland murder case
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In the early morning hours of July 7, 1977, Yale graduate Richard Herrin bludgeoned his former girlfriend, Yale student Bonnie Garland, to death with a hammer as she lay sleeping in her parent's Scarsdale, New York, home. Herrin was eventually convicted of manslaughter, rather than first degree murder. He served 17 years in prison, released on January 12, 1995. Critics charge that the reduced sentence was the result of the Yale community and the Catholic church uniting to support Herrin by portraying him as the victim of his upbringing in a minority neighborhood barrio in Los Angeles. The relegation of the victim to the background and the protective shield thrown up by a supposedly moral community around an unrepentant killer has become a more familiar theme in contemporary jurisprudence, but the Garland case foreshadowed others in which the victim was transparently put on trial, such as the Preppie Murder case, tried by Jack Litman, Herrin's lawyer. Herrin had been supported by Yale before the murder with a full-tuition scholarship.
[edit] References
- The Yale Murder: The Compelling True Narrative of the Fatal Romance of Bonnie Garland and Richard Herrin, Peter Meyer
- The Killing of Bonnie Garland: A Question of Justice, Willard Gaylin
