Blog Posts

When Michael Moore visited Wall Street to try to figure out where our bail out money went, he got stonewalled. So he went back with the intent to make a citizen's arrest of the thieves on Wall Street. Although the Catholic Church didn't send Swiss Guards to help perfect the attempted arrests,...

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced this morning that he is retiring at the end of the current term. The retirement gives President Barack Obama an ideal opportunity to honor the commitment to change that was the hallmark of his presidential campaign. He can and should nominate a...

The last two times I passed through Washington, D.C.'s Union Station, my eyes were drawn to a flag dealer's display. "Don't Treat On Me," many of the flags say. In my mind's eye, I see the flag flying proudly in front of my home, or draped, dorm-like, from a wall somewhere in my office. I love the...

The following editorial appeared in a recent edition of The Hartford Courant, the nation's oldest continuously published newspaper. It is a sign that good sense is infectious.
Hat Tip: JK
When the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, a federal law aimed at sex offenders, was being...

I like Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, so it pains me to say this: It is time for her to fold her tent and go silently into the night. In the past few months she has shown a remarkable ability to pick the wrong fight, at the wrong time, and to wage it in the wrong manner.
This is a jubilee...

Imagine being placed in prison for the rest of your life for a crime you did not commit. Suppose the state were forced to admit its error. What would justice require in such a case?
Connecticut once again faces the drama of men released after long, long incarceration for crimes they did not...

Steven Hayes has apparently decided that he doesn't want to plead guilty after all. So jury selection has resumed in his capital case. But smoldering just beneath the surface of the cold record in this case is an issue that the court has not yet been forced to address: Who decides whether he lives...

Regular readers know that I am more than a little ambivalent about Gerry Spence's Trial Lawyer's College. I doubt it can or will survive Spence's retirement, and I've noted with a chortling, irresponsible sort of glee what appears to be strains of hypocrisy evident in the institution. But even so,...

I just spent a long weekend out of town and away from a keyboard. One of my tasks was to look through the 500 or so columns I have written for the Connecticut Law Tribune in the past decade with an eye toward selecting 100 or so to propose to a publisher a volume of collected essays. The experience...

It is difficult to know what Steven Hayes wants. Sure, he stood in open court and told the judge that he wants to plead guilty to the charges against him, including the capital felonies. It is black letter law that the decision to plead guilty belongs to the client. But is Mr. Hayes also...