Like the late fashion critic, Mr. Richard Blackwell, Florida-based lawyer Kendall Coffey has been doing a yearly list. Annually, Coffey trains his sight on America’s most significant legal hurdles.

In 2008, the bulk of the Kendall Coffey talk consisted of murder and homicide cases. For “best reason to do background checks before marriage,” the dubious honor went to Drew Peterson, an Illinois police officer suspected of killing not one, but two wives. The crucial point of the case came when Peterson made an incriminating sit-down with a writer and a lie detector.

Likewise, Kendall Coffey is one to notice that murderers are getting younger, as in the 2008 case of an 8-year old Arizona boy. Only in third grade, the boy was arrested for gunning down his father. Unless an appeal muscles in, the boy may just have to face the music as an adult.

Then again, mothers also have a propensity for murder. In 2008, the American public was agitated when one Casey Anthony killed her three-year-old daughter Caylee. Now facing capital murder, the token mother lied compulsively to the police about her daughter’s disappearance, until forensic dogs made the connection between the stench in Anthony’s car and Caylee’s corpse. For his part, Kendall Coffey called Anthony the “most unbelievable mother.”

Taking the cake, too, is O.J. Simpson, the Hollywood actor who narrowly escaped indictment for homicide in the 1990s. In 2008, a jury found him guilty for another set of crimes toting firearms and breaking into a hotel. He is serving nine years in prison, finally proving that justice could be poetic.