At the behest of editor Hasso Hering, I’ve spent a decent chunk of time over the last four months hanging out at the Linn County Courthouse (and, to a lesser extent, municipal court at Albany City Hall), looking for stories that might be of interest to our readers.

A couple things I have learned over those months:

1) The judicial system is in fact fertile ground for story topics, but

2) Even when I’m pursuing a specific topic, the courthouse beat involves a lot of sitting around.

Case in point: On Tuesday morning, I reported to the courthouse at 8:30 a.m. because the defendant in a sex abuse case I’ve been following was scheduled for an appearance in Courtroom 5. Unfortunately, so were about 40 other defendants, and of course the cases are dealt with one at at time.

Of course, the defendant I was there to report on didn’t appear before the judge until 10:15, which meant I had to kill almost two hours. I while away the time as I typically do in while waiting in court, by playing with my cell phone, updating my Facebook status, etc.

Just for the heck of it, I sent a text message to my wife, who isn’t really into texting.

“Bored in court. Help,” I wrote.

Somewhat amazingly, she texted back: “Think of blog topics.”

“Have a top 7 idea?” I replied.

“Top court cases,” she answered. “And now stop bothering me. I’m trying to give good value for your tax dollar.”

(She works at OSU, and that’s my standard instruction to her).

Despite her overall disinterest in helping me, I figured that wasn’t a half-bad idea, so I spent part of the rest of my wait thinking of seven legendary court cases. Here we go:

1) Scopes monkey trial. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan debate evolution and the teaching thereof in 1920s Tennessee.

2) Sacco and Vanzetti. Tried for murder in Massachusetts in 1920, the pair were also effectively on trial for being immigrants and anarchists. They were executed in 1927.

3) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: American communists were executed for espionage in 1953.

4) O.J. Simpson. You know the story.

5) Leopold and Loeb. In 1924, well-to-do University of Chicago students murder a 14-year-old just for the sake of trying to commit a perfect crime, retain Darrow for their defense, receive life in prison.

6) Sam Sheppard. Cleveland osteopath is convicted of killing his pregnant wife in 1954 and then acquitted in a new trial in 1966. He famously blamed the killing on a bushy-haired intruder.

7) Lizzie Borden. Acquitted of the 1892 hatchet murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Mass., she remained a notorious figure nonetheless. No one else was ever arrested for the crimes.

Note: I considered, obviously, Roe v. Wade for this list. But I’m really, really tired of the whole abortion debate so opted to give that case a miss.