Blog Posts

I spent some of the unhappiest years of my life pretending to be something I was not: You see, I was a member of an editorial board. I earned my living writing daily opinions about all matters far and wide. The opinions appeared under the masthead of the Waterbury newspapers, and then under the...

“You’re a lawyer?” The man looked at me with disdain, his paunch creeping out from beneath his bulletproof vest. I had just pulled up to the York Correctional Institution to visit with a client. He sauntered out of the booth acting put upon.
“Yes,” I...

New Haven’s Mayor John DeStefano took to the air waves this morning to defend the City’s actions yesterday on the New Haven Green. He’s defending his police chief, Dean Esserman, against charges that Esserman jumped the gun in efforts to evict protestors from the Green. I take...

New Haven's Mayor John DeStefano will be on the Chaz and AJ show on WPLR 99.1 FM on Thursday at 7:30 a.m. His mission? To explain why he did not look like a complete ass on New Haven's Green this week when he ordered the eviction of the New Haven Occupy protestors only to be stopped dead in his...

I stood in a public place yesterday and watched two tearful parents say goodbye to an American hero. The young man was leaving for a year. Odds are, he will return safe and sound. But the world is a dangerous place. There are no guarantees. They were sending him into harm’s way.
His...

I saw the White Devil the other day, and it terrified and saddened me. He was reflected in the look of wariness and suspicion in a young man’s eye. The kid couldn’t have been more than fourteen. He had the lean and supple look of someone not yet bent by time. He was carrying a sign with...

The claims and counterclaims regarding the killing of Trayvon Martin are flying fast and furious. It’s well past time to get this case into a courtroom. Here is how it can get to court immediately.
But first, some preliminaries.
Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford,...

I find it almost impossible to walk away from a fight, which explains, I suppose, my choice of vocation. Trying cases is one of the few places left in which a hired gun can take aim and fire. So I am still grumbling about Occupy New Haven and the Committee of Proprietors of Common and Undivided...

"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," Jesus is reported to have said. Somehow, I don’t think he foresaw just how much a threat the truth could be in the courtrooms of the United States. Why knowing the truth just got one juror fined $500 in the New Jersey...

In the Roman Coliseum the crowd voted thumbs up, or thumbs down based on the performance they had just witnessed. Life or death depended on the fancy of a mob who had come out to view blood sport. I wonder how different we are today.
There is no dispute of fact about what caused the death of...