14. Give a summary of the text.

15. Speak individually or arrange a discussion on the following.

• An existing marriage is indeed an essential element of bigamy.

• The crime of bigamy is only complete when the second marriage is performed.

• I think burglary can take place both in day- and nighttime.

Case study

16. Scrutinize the situation and provide detailed and motivated answers to the questions given below.

Identify key points in the article and extract information from it to pass on to somebody else.

CONSPIRACY IN MEMPHIS

Austin, Texas

The shape of important events usually becomes dearer with the passage of time – unless, that is, the conspiracy theo­rists have a say in the matter. On Decem­ber 8th, a Memphis jury ruled that the as­sassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 was the work not of James Earl Ray, who was charged with it, but of an elaborate network of Memphis businessmen, mob­sters and government agencies.

The verdict ended a month-long wrongful-death civil lawsuit brought by the King family, who have long sub­scribed to conspiracy theories about the death of the civil-rights leader. Officially, the defendant in the case was Loyd Jowers, a Memphis bar owner who, the plain­tiffs alleged, hired a hit man to kill King. Yet the real targets of William Pepper, a lawyer for the King family, were the CIA, the Green Berets, British and Canadian in­telligence, and defence contractors.

Mr Pepper argued that King became a threat to all these groups when he began opposing the Vietnam war, and therefore they conspired with Mr Jowers to have him killed. During his closing arguments, Mr Pepper even argued that the media have perpetuated the myth that Ray killed King because most of the media are ClA-controlled.

Most lawyers have dismissed the en­tire case as a fraud, arguing that only an apathetic Judge (who often dozed off dur­ing the proceedings) saved it from being thrown out of court. Yet members of the King family praised the verdict for bring­ing a conclusion to the family's 30-year search for the “truth” about the Memphis assassination. Dexter King, one of King's sons, said in a post-trial press conference that the plot to kill his father was “the most incredible cover-up of the century”.

The family aligned itself with Mr Pep­per after he published “Orders to Kill,” a 1998 conspiracy tract that prompted Dex­ter King to visit Ray in prison for a tele­vised reconciliation. (Ray died there last year, insisting to the end that he had been framed). According to David Garrow, who wrote a Pulitzer prize-winning bio­graphy of King, the conspiracy theories fill an emotional need of his family and friends to explain the assassination as something larger than the act of one mad­man. Coretta Scott King, his widow, has persuaded the Justice Department to in­vestigate several of the conspiracy angles. Yet few people believe that this (or the ver­dict in the civil trial) will result in any new criminal charges.

Nevertheless, a Hollywood account of the assassination may soon be playing at a cinema near you. The King family has sold the film rights to Oliver Stone, the man who once involved the CIA, the FBI and the whole military-industrial complex – plus Lyndon Johnson – in the murder of President Kennedy. One shudders to think what he will do with the King case [16].

Questions:

1. Who was Martin Luther King?

2. Why was he killed?

3. Was he really killed by James Earl Ray?

4. Why have most layers dismissed the entire case as a fraud?

5. Was there really a plot to kill Martin Luther King?

6. Why have the King family subscribed to conspiracy theories?

7. Do you think the as­sassination was something larger than the act of one mad­man?