Noted Defense Attorney Murdered. It’s Norway’s First Homicide Of 2021.

The son of a high-profile defense attorney in Norway has been charged with shooting and killing his father. The son’s attorney, in an interview on Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK), called the victim a good and respected colleague and said the murder was the tragic result of a long standing family conflict. The son allegedly also tried to kill the attorney’s live-in partner, who has a different back-story. According to her attorney, she had not seen indications of a bad family relationship, and she likened what happened to “lightning from a clear sky.” This is the first murder in Norway this year, according to an account of the case in  NEWSinEnglish.no (“Views and News from Norway”).

In the U.S, for comparison, no tally of this year’s murder count is available, but if one were compiled it would be obsolete in not much more time than it would take to read it. Preliminary statistics for 2020 suggest that year’s final tally will be about 20,000, according to a an article in the New York Times. If that projection is accurate, it would mean one murder every 26.28 minutes.

This year’s murder count in Norway is lower than usual. During the last 10 years the number has varied between 23 and 33, with one outlier of 44, reports Life in Norway. That article notes those figures exclude deaths from terrorist attacks and do not include 77 people killed in a right-wing nationalist’s rampage in 2011. Norway has a population of about 5.3 million.

Today’s General Counsel / DR