WWE trademarks name - Harlem Lewis - shared by death row inmate

Earlier today, it was reported by Fightful that

On September 18, WWE filed to trademark "Harlem Lewis" for entertainment purposes. It is unclear how WWE intends to use the trademark.

Harlem Harold Lewis III is a death row inmate in Texas. He was convicted for the murders of Bellaire Police Corporal Jimmie Norman and a bystander, Terry Taylor, during a traffic stop on December 24, 2012.

On that day, Lewis refused to stop for a traffic violation, fled in his vehicle, and eventually pulled over into a store parking lot. When Corporal Norman attempted to detain him, Lewis shot him in the head at close range. Taylor, who tried to assist Norman, was also shot and killed by Lewis.

Lewis was sentenced to death in 2014 after being found guilty of capital murder. He remains on death row, and his case has been upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

When WWE changed the name of Walter Hahn to Gunther, the original name they chose for him was Gunther Stark.

As SI.com noted at the time, a quick Google search could’ve avoided what happened next. The reason the world only knowns him now as Gunther is because:

On Jan. 13, the same day that Walter’s final NXT UK match aired, WWE filed a trademark application for the ring name Gunther Stark. The filing flew under the radar until Louis Dangoor of British website Give Me Sport pointed out on Tuesday that just a few seconds of research was enough to find that “Gunther Stark” was the name of the commander of a Nazi U-boat sunk in the English Channel in 1944.

It took a very quick Google search earlier for me to find out that the top results for Harlem Lewis are for a convicted cop killer on death row in Texas.