2008 deaths

Clyde Wilson (1923 – November 1, 2008) was an American detective and private investigator. He was famous for his skills to solve difficult cases. He is regarded as "Houston's Most Public Private Eye".

Charlotte T. Armstrong (née Lubman; June 17, 1924 – November 24, 2008) was a pitcher who played from 1944 through 1945 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m), 145 lb., Armstrong batted and threw right-handed. She was affectionately nicknamed Skipper.
A hard fastball pitcher, Armstrong was one of the top starters in the AAGPBL for two years before jumping to a rival professional league.

William Docker Browning (May 19, 1931 – February 26, 2008) was an American attorney and jurist who served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Arizona.

Marisa Sannia (February 15, 1947 in Iglesias, Sardinia, Italy – April 14, 2008 in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy) was an Italian singer from the island of Sardinia. She started her career with success in pop music in the sixties. She later became an interpreter of songs, composer, an actress and then finally an artistic researcher. She is primarily noted for being a singer in the Sardinian language, her native tongue.
Sannia died in Cagliari at the age of 61 on April 14, 2008.

Oreste Rizzini (27 March 1940 – 18 March 2008) was an Italian actor and voice actor.

José Ernesto Medellín Rojas (March 4, 1975 – August 5, 2008), born in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, was a Mexican national who was executed by lethal injection for the murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña in Houston, Texas.
Medellín was convicted of raping and killing 16-year-old Peña and 14-year-old Ertman in June 1993.His case gained notoriety when Mexico sued the United States in the International Court of Justice on behalf of 51 Mexican nationals asserting that the US had violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which requires that local authorities inform foreign nationals being held on criminal charges of their right to consult with their country's diplomats. That court ruled that the United States was obliged to have the defendants' cases reopened and reconsidered. The Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear the case on May 1, 2007.The Bush administration briefed the Supreme Court on the obligation to comply with international treaties. On March 25, 2008, in Medellín v. Texas, the court rejected the Bush administration's arguments and cleared the way for Texas to execute the sentence. The International Court of Justice later ruled that the United States had violated its treaty obligations.

Geir Kjetsaa (2 June 1937, in Oslo – 2 June 2008) was a Norwegian professor in Russian literary history at the University of Oslo, translator of Russian literature, and author of several biographies of classical Russian writers.

Nils Retterstøl (3 October 1924 – 9 February 2008) was a Norwegian psychiatrist. He was a professor at the University of Bergen from 1968 to 1973, and at the University of Oslo from 1973 to 1994. He published several books on mental subjects. He is also famous for saying "A man who is determined that he is right, despite everyone else telling him that he is wrong, certainly do have a serious mental illness" which was his statement in the Juklerød case, where a healthy person was forcibly restrained in a mental institution and medicated, because of him being "difficult for the authorities". Perhaps the biggest psychiatric scandal in Norway.
Retterstøl was still decorated Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1984.

Marcial Maciel Degollado (March 10, 1920 – January 30, 2008) was a Mexican Catholic priest who founded the Legion of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement. He was general director of the Legion from 1941 to 2005. Throughout most of his career, he was respected within the church as "the greatest fundraiser of the modern Roman Catholic church" and as a prolific recruiter of new seminarians. Late in his life, Maciel was revealed to have been a longtime drug addict who sexually abused many boys and young men in his care. After his death, it came to light that he had also maintained sexual relationships with at least four women, one of whom was a minor at the time. He fathered as many as six children, two of whom he is alleged to have sexually abused.In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI removed Maciel from active ministry, based on the results of an investigation that he had started in his previous role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before his election as Pope in April 2005. Maciel was ordered "to conduct a reserved life of prayer and penance, renouncing every public ministry". He died in 2008. On March 25, 2010, a communiqué on the Legion's website acknowledged as factual the "reprehensible actions" by Maciel, including sexual abuse of minor seminarians. In May 2010, the Vatican denounced Maciel's actions and appointed a Papal Delegate to oversee the order and its governance.

Henry Arana Rodríguez (May 1, 1921 – February 23, 2008) was a composer of popular songs who was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and lived all but the last years of his life in Puerto Rico. At the time of his death, from complications related to a neurological disease, he was residing in Alabama and was married to Carmen Mártir Santiago. He served in the United States Army in World War II.Arana composed hundreds of songs made popular by a wide variety of Puerto Rican artists, including Cano Estremera, Bobby Valentín, Willie Rosario, El Gran Combo, Cortijo y su Combo, Tito Rojas, Andy Montañez, Gilberto Santa Rosa, La Sonora Ponceña, Mario Ortiz and Mario Hernández, as well as Mexican artists, such as Adrián Alejandro.
Among his best-known compositions are "Mi Puerto Rico", which was played as his remains were laid to rest at the Puerto Rico National Cemetery in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, "La novia automática", "Awilda", "Sanjuanero", "Por culpa de tu amor", "Como sube la gasolina" and "La gringa". His "Samba con Salsa", composed in the 1980s was a precursor of the fusion music that was popularized twenty years later.