Another Lightning Round

There are several items about which I've been meaning to blog lately, and these stories make up our most recent Lightning Round! (See previous entries here.)

Item 1: University of Georgia Murders
The fatal shootings at the University of Georgia campus in Athens, GA on April 25th at first appeared to be similar to other university shootings. Then came news that the alleged shooter was not a student but a faculty member, George Zinkhan, and that one of the three victims was Zinkhan's wife -- and so the story unfolded as an all-too-familiar case of intimate partner homicide. But then Zinkhan disappeared, and a weeks-long manhunt turned up no trace of him until this past weekend when cadaver dogs discovered his body in a concealed grave he apparently dug for himself immediately before committing suicide. And then, I think, it became clear that this story is quite unlike others we've heard:

Zinkhan's body was found in a small dugout area in the ground, covered with leaves and debris, and it was apparent that he took significant steps to try to conceal his body from being located," a statement from Athens police said.

Law enforcement officials determined that Zinkhan, 57, committed suicide after killing his wife, Marie Bruce, 47, Thomas Tanner, 40, and Ben Teague, 63, outside a theater in Athens on April 25.

Another University of Georgia professor, Barbara Carroll, believes that she was also targeted by Zinkhan but escaped because she was at a movie theater the day of the slayings.

In an e-mail obtained by CNN, Carroll had warned her colleagues at the university's Terry College of Business that Zinkhan, a marketing professor, was "dangerous." The e-mail was sent after the shootings but before Zinkhan's body was found.

I don't really have much commentary to add, other than to say that I'm puzzled about why he went to such lengths to conceal his body. While suicide is very often the final result of male-perpetrated domestic homicide, I can't quite make out why he would have wanted nobody to find his body. A final act of cowardice? The consequence of a deeply disturbed mental state? Who knows? It certainly is unusual, though.

Item 2: The Pending SCOTUS Nomination
Now that Justice David Souter has announced his retirement, President Obama is poised to make his first Supreme Court nomination. There is a rare consensus in the political blogosphere that the nominee will be a woman (and also, possibly, a lesbian). Indeed, no less an authority than Justice Ginsburg has bemoaned the current gender imbalance on the Supreme Court bench. While the predictable wave of "Why can't we judge the nominees by their records and not their chromosomes?!" hand-wringing has already begun, I agree with Justice Ginsburg that the appointment of a woman is of paramount importance:

Ginsburg said having just one woman on the Supreme Court sends a disheartening message to Americans about women's roles in society. She stressed the contrast between the Supreme Court and international courts, many of which have higher percentages of women.

The nine-member Supreme Court of Canada, for example, has four women justices, including the chief justice. Ginsburg also pointed to state courts in the USA, where, according to the National Center for State Courts, 20 top state benches, including those in Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin, are led by female chief justices.

The "worst part," Ginsburg said, is the image a single woman at the high court projects, particularly to young people visiting the court: "Young women are going to think, 'Can I really aspire to that kind of post?'"

Item 3: New Issue of the ANNALS on Race, Crime, & Justice

The May issue of the ANNALS might be of particular interest to folks who study and/or teach about race/ethnicity and crime. Entitled "Race, Crime, and Justice: Contexts and Complexities" and edited by race and crime experts Lauren Krivo and Ruth Peterson, this issue grew out of the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network workshops that Krivo and Peterson coordinate at Ohio State University. The featured articles look terrific, and I can't resist mentioning that one of them was co-authored by fellow Spartan and friend of the blog Jeff Cancino!