There are secret courts operating in our midst, and I am not referring to those tribunals whose focus is national security. I’m talking about something more basic and closer to home. I’m talking about our juvenile courts, where the fate of children is sometimes determined.
Consider the case of Jane Doe and John Doe, two Connecticut parents stuck in Kafkaesque proceedings. They are in the midst of a divorce. They have three children. Those children are now in foster care, and it is not clear when the parents will again have the right to raise them as they see fit. In fact, it...
October 26, 2014
I'm not a fan of the Justice Department, so I ought to be rooting for Kurt Siuzdak, a 17-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who has filed suit against Attorney General Eric Holder. Instead, I'm wondering just what he is hoping to accomplish. My hunch is that he is angling for a job as commentator on Fox News, or a seat in some red state congressional district. From a distance, his suit seems not so much misguided, as sad, even tragic.
Siuzdak has filed suit claiming that he has been retaliated against by the FBI, in particular a former supervisor named Kimberly Mertz,...
October 22, 2014
The law of evidence governs what is and is not admissible in a trial. A judge’s decision on what a jury hears could quite literally be the difference between freedom and imprisonment, and, in some cases, between life and death. Just ask Larry Johnson.
Earlier this year, Brittany Paz, Jim Nugent and I defended Mr. Johnson in New Haven against a charge of murder. Our defense was that some third party, and not Mr. Johnson, had fired the fatal shot. The law calls such a defense third-party culpability; lawyers have a more casual name for such a defense — “some other dude...
October 16, 2014
I wasn't on the New Haven jury that convicted Angelo Reyes of arson and conspiracy charges. But I know a thing or two about Mr. Reyes, having represented him in federal court on other arson charges before federal prosecutors engineered a conflict to get me thrown off the case: They threatened to call another client of mine as a witness.
Lawyers can't serve two masters; we owe to each client a duty of undivided loyalty. Although the feds never called my other client against Mr. Reyes, their claim that they might was enough to get me bounced off the case.
My former partner and...
October 14, 2014
October 9, 2014
Juries are fickle, especially in civil cases, where we give them the right and the power to award money in the form of compensatory damages, and, in...
October 2, 2014
"Do you think anyone should go to jail?" The speaker, a youngish FBI agent, looked at me with the same devilish grin I had seen on his face any...
September 30, 2014
“Everybody talks,” the prosecutor said. He was confident, strutting his stuff in the well of the court. “In the end, everyone...
September 28, 2014
Somehow, the prospect of John Rowland's returning to a federal prison does not make me all warm, fuzzy and grateful to be living in this, the best of...
September 25, 2014
A future historian might one day write the following of our time:
“Despite a generally permissive culture in which sexually suggestive...
September 19, 2014
There’s a cold logic in refusing to pay ransom to terrorists: Holding a firm line may well serve as a deterrent to further acts of terror....