Featuring ACBA Members Judge Meera T. Parikh, Rebecca Peterson-Fisher, and Mike Spencer
ACBA member Meera T. Parikh, of Alameda County, has been appointed to serve as a Judge in the Alameda County Superior Court. Parikh has worked as a Partner and Litigation Attorney at Poniatowski Leding Parikh PC since 2007. She worked as a Litigation Associate at Parish & Small PLC from 2003 to 2007. Parikh was a Patent Attorney at Hickman Palermo Truong & Becker from 2001 to 2003. Parikh received a Juris Doctor degree from Santa Clara University School of Law. She fills the vacancy created by the appointment of Judge Mark McCannon to the San Mateo Superior Court.
ACBA member Rebecca Peterson-Fisher, Katz Banks Kumin LLP, recently had a case covered by AP. Transgender federal workers face challenges under Trump’s policies
ACBA member and private investigator Mike Spencer recently won audiotapes from the San Francisco Police in a 1998 case. Last year, before the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, he secured a 900-page case file into the uncharged murder of 41-year-old ex-felon and biker Gary Murphy. Spencer had battled the police and the San Francisco District Attorney for many years, filing Public Records Act requests for the case materials.
The tapes and case file are featured in his six-part true crime podcast, The Gary Murphy Assassination, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other platforms. The newest episode includes early witness interviews and a police interview with the prime suspect—tapes the public had never heard before.
The case began in early 1998, when a grandmother hired Spencer in a child custody investigation of Murphy, father to her then 6-year-old granddaughter. After finding nothing incriminating, Spencer ended the client relationship. Three months later, Murphy was shot twice in the back at the halfway house he managed near Ocean Beach. Case files revealed that the grandmother had likely hired three ex-felons in a scheme to murder him.
Over the years, police lost phone records and conducted two separate investigations, but no charges were filed. Spencer was the first to report that the gunman and an accomplice later committed a home invasion and sexual assault of a pregnant mother in Piedmont, just a week after Murphy’s murder. The San Francisco DA declined to bring charges twice.
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