Blog Posts

We've got a pretty good thing going in the federal courts of this state, at least I think we do. It is a small bar. Almost all of the judges have roots in the state and still draw nourishment from relationships formed at the bar. We've not yet become a big state, replete with brash big-state norms....

Mike Cernovich called one day in 2005. Did I want to write for a blog page he created called Crime and Federalism? My response was simple: "What's a blog?"
Mike and I wrote for a couple of years and page had a modest popularity. He still writes under the banner, although his interests are now...

Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz is the front runner among candidates seeking the soon-to-be-vacated office of Attorney General. I am not at all surprised. She has been a responsive member of the state House of Representatives and Secretary of the State. Claims that she has not...

Wow. The police department in the Town of Redding, Connecticut, is very, very creative.
When police officers in the town are subpoenaed to attend a deposition as fact witnesses in connection with a civil action, they come armed with a bill for their time. The town justifies the practice of...

Ice is melting in a New Haven courtroom, and the world has turned out to watch. Will members of the Connecticut General Assembly pay any attention? Will they open their eyes and realize that individual sequestered voir dire wastes time and contributes little or nothing to the pursuit of...

Among the many inconsistencies in the law is the manner in which we distinguish death penalty cases from those cases in which the state seeks something less than the life of the defendant. The courts are content to ignore these inconsistencies because, as the Supreme Court put it, "death is...

Did Governor N. Jodi Rell deprive Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsy of fair trials for their roles in the 2007 home invasion in Cheshire?
One of the lawyers for Mr. Hayes thinks so, and he has filed a motion to bar imposition of the death penalty in the case in the likely event his client is...

The Winter 2009-2010 edition of Censorship News arrived the other day. The lead articule stunned me. It turns out that Yale University Press lost its nerve and succumbed to fear last summer. It deleted cartoons that Moslems might find offensive. The rationale? The book might stimulate violence...

Virginia lawmakers are on the cusp of making a big mistake: They are about to make the restrictions imposed on all persons convicted of sex offenses even more stringent.
In theory, it all sounds like a great idea. Protect our children from risk. Who could oppose the concept? But the devil is...

I cannot fathom the grief of Dr. William Petit. I hope never to know such pain. And I pray that if I am ever undone by evil my neighbors will have the good sense to leave me in peace and not make me into a veritable rock star of rage.
Those of you not from Connecticut may not recognize the...