Blog Posts

Let me see if I get this right: We take an eighteen-year-old kid, break down his inhibitions against killing another person, train him to kill, place him in harm’s way and require him to kill or be killed, and then expect what? That he will blow the smoke from his smoking barrel, walk away...

It should surprise no one that the lone vote casting doubt on the reliability of eyewitness testimony came from the only United States Supreme Court justice with experience actually trying cases. Most justices think facts are something you read about in a textbook, or in a legal brief. Only Sonia...

I have an assignment for an aspiring historian: Locate the moment in American history when ordinary people began to fear one another more than they feared the potential of government to abuse its power. I am sure the moment exists. I see signs of it everywhere. Consider the case of how a national...

When I watch Orly Tatiz and Georgia State Representative Mark Hatfield, a Republican, explain why they think President Barack Obama’s name should be struck from the Georgia primary ballot I am at once inspired with a wish that the South had won the Civil War: The species of idiocy espoused by...

Murder-for-hire preoccupied me at week’s end. It’s not that I was in the market for a killer, mind you. But I’ve defended people accused of the crime from time-to-time, and every once in awhile I get a heads up from law enforcement that someone has put a price on my head. No, at...

The course I recall best from law school was Carol Weisbrod’s family law class at the University of Connecticut. At the time, I did not appreciate it. In fact, I thought it down-right bizarre, even offensive. You see, she used science fiction as part of the pedagogical material. At the time,...

I’ve often wished that the general public could see what goes on behind closed doors in the criminal courts. All that is generally reported is the damning accusations against a defendant. The press accepts the state’s claims as the controlling narrative. The fight to make sure a client...

I expect the trial of the year will be United States of America v. Julian Assange. Of course, Assange has not yet been charged. He is not even in the country. But the United States will find a way to bring him here, a sort of reverse rendition that will place the Australian hacker within the...

President James Garfield did not have to die. It appears as if the medical care he received killed him. Even so, Charles Julius Guiteau fired the shots that led to his death on July 2, 1881. Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of the...

I will count 2011 a good year, despite the dire economy. It was a year of focusing, getting lean, re-examining priorities. As 2011 ends, I am uncharacteristically optimistic. Despite a world of trouble, the sum of it all seems to represent a gathering storm. There’s a certain energy in the...