Conservative lawyer guilty of arson in Arizona, commits suicide in courtroom

Yale educated lawyer and Conservative author Michael Marin, 53, killed himself moments after he was found guilty of arson in an Arizona courtroom. He was facing 15 years in prison, but he took matters into his own hands in dramatic fashion. Such was typical for the life of Michael Marin. You may watch the video of the incident on the left hand side of this article.

The ruling came down from an incident in 2009 when Marin's multi-million dollar mansion caught fire. At the time Marin said he "barely escaped" the blaze, using a rope ladder to assist him from the second floor. When officers arrived on the scene Marin was seen wearing a scuba tank and a diving mask to protect him from smoke inhalation. The thought must not have crossed his mind that the tank itself could have exploded from the heat, causing an entirely different set of problems. Mr. Marin will not have to muse about that scenario, however.

Michael Marin was a towering figure. His resume reads like something out of a fortune 500 magazine. The Vice President of the prestigious Salomon Brothers, Senior Vice President at the now defunct but massive Lehman Brothers, and the Director of Merrill Lynch's Asia Pacific operations.

He once climbed Mount Everest, and at one time he owned millions of dollars in fine art. However at the end he was flat broke, and almost $3 million in debt that included an over $2 million balloon payment that was soon to be owed on the mansion.

It was a very cut and dry case to Deputy Maricopa County Attorney, Chris Rapp, who, according to Azcentral.com, said during the trial "Michael Marin couldn't pay his mortgage, so he burned down his house."

The evidence against Marin was stacked high for any case. An investigation of the fire yielded damning evidence that included several boxes of highly flammable content that were found to be connected through the mansion. This was enough for prosecutors to determine that Marin had intentionally set the fire.

Video shows Marin swallowing an unknown object, likely a pill, and then drank from a sports bottle that was in his briefcase. More will be known about the specific cause of death after an autopsy is performed, but the results are typically not released for several weeks after a full investigation.

What is known is that seven minutes after Marin put the unknown item in his mouth, he began convulsing, and lost consciousness falling face first onto the floor. Witnesses say his skin was gray as they took him out of the court house on a stretcher. Paramedics were unable to revive him and Marin was pronounced dead when the ambulance arrived at the hospital.

Michael Marin's last job was the Editor-in-Chief of Macaw Publishing, which he founded. He was the author of several books including, "The Terrorist Plot to Smuggle Nuclear Weapons into the United States of America."

As of this writing a funeral for Marin has not been publicly announced.

Source: Examiner.com (June 29, 2012)