Professor Leonard Birdsong lives in Orlando, Florida where he teaches Criminal Law, Evidence and Immigration Law. He received his Juris Doctor degree from the Harvard Law School and his Bachelor’s degree from Howard University. He has written many scholarly legal pieces since joining the legal academy. He is now in the process of writing a series of books containing weird criminal law stories. His stories provide fun and enjoyable reading.
Professor Birdsong is proud of his legal career which included his work as an attorney with the law firm of Baker & Hostetler. Later he served as a diplomat with the State Department with various postings in Nigeria, Germany, and the Bahamas.
In Nigeria Professor Birdsong served as a cultural affairs officer who often accompanied visiting American dignitaries to meetings with Nigerian officials. In Germany he served as chief of the nonimmigrant visa section of the U.S. Consulate in Hamburg. I his three years at this post he oversaw the issuance of 300,000 U.S. visas. He also served as a hearing officer for former Nazi Party members and Waffen SS soldiers who sought visitor visas to travel to the U.S. In his Bahamas posting professor Birdsong was chief of the Visa section that issued immigrant and nonimmigrant visas.
Professor Birdsong also worked as a federal prosecutor, first as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, and later as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for the U.S. Virgin Islands. While stationed in the Virgin Islands he had the good fortune to live for a time on St. Thomas and later live on St. Croix. While there he became a member of the Virgin island bar.
After leaving government service, Professor Birdsong was in private practice in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in trial work ranging from criminal defense work to political asylum matters. While in private practice he represented 31 defendants charged with first degree murder – some he got off – and was appointed a defense counsel in three major federal racketeering cases prosecuted in Washington, D.C.
While in practice he also did on-air TV legal analysis work for Fox News, CNN, Court TV, BET TV News, and for W*USA Channel 9 in Washington, D.C. During this same period, he also produced and hosted several radio talk programs in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas. Currently, Professor Birdsong is occasionally invited to appear as a legal commentator on MSNBC, Fox Radio, and CBS Radio.
Leonard Birdsong and radio guests in 1996 when he was host of the Thursdsay afternoon talk show at WPFW-FM radio station in Washington, D.C.
Leonard Birdsong in 1993 hosting his an overnight talk show on WRC-AM in Washington, D.C.
Professor Leonard Birdsong and Yvette at the 2003 Barristers Ball at Barry University School of Law with other faculty members and their spouses.
Although he has been involved in serious criminal law work over the years as a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and a law professor, Professor Birdsong knows that it is good to stayed grounded. This means often taking time to look at the many funny and weird criminal law stories that crop up around the United States and the world. He believes we should not always take criminal law so seriously and instead, just have a good laugh at some of the silly foibles of dumb criminals and their crimes. That is why several years ago he began to collect and edit from the wire services and news the type of weird and funny criminal law stories that appear in this volume.
Professor Birdsong hopes that you will get a few good laughs or at least, some chuckles from his collection of weird criminal law stories and his “snarky” commentary accompanying each of them.