Blog Posts

UPDATE: Death it is for Joshua Komisarjevsky. The jury completed its work and reported its verdict at about 3:15 p.m. today. Let the world marvel at how we will kill the killer for killing and call it just.
Today will be the day, I say. The jurors will check their notes, and, perhaps, head...

Given the great length of time it took for the United States Senate to schedule the unanimous vote approving Christopher Droney for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, it is unlikely any nominee proposed to fill Droney’s now vacant seat on the District Court...

As is often the case, I learned that something I wrote on these pages the other day failed to capture the entire truth. I questioned why criminal defense lawyers weren’t invited to apply for the vacancy for a federal trial judge in Connecticut. It turns out at least one or...

Before he left for Los Angeles and a Christmas party at the Ritz-Carlton, Gov. Dannel Malloy dropped a bomb: State workers applied for, and received, disaster benefits to which they were not otherwise entitled in the wake of Hurricane Irene. He was spitting fire and brimstone at a Sunday afternoon...

I will never forget a late afternoon chat I once had with now-Justice Sonya Sotomayor when she was sitting on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Had I considered becoming a federal judge? I ought to, she said. The Obama administration was looking for criminal defense and...

And so we come, finally, to what appears to be, and what everyone certainly hopes will be, the final chapter of the trials in what will forever be known as the Cheshire home invasion case. Closing arguments are upon us in the case of Joshua Komisarjevsky, Steven Hayes already having been dispatched...

Thanksgiving came not a day too soon this time around. It has been a grim, unforgiving sort of year. Receipts in my firm are low. I’ve laid people off. One good man now stands to lose his home; another can’t find work and suffered a blow to his health. Clients call, all in need; few...

The Sunday New York Times nailed what’s wrong with legal education in this country: The legal academy educates lawyers by long exposure to professors who don’t practice law. The chattering class teaches theory, not practice. Mere practitioners are scorned. We have nothing to teach. We...

Just where do I apply for my First Amendment license? It turns out you need one in Connecticut if you want to get a complete view of the evidence in the Joshua Komisarjevsky case.
Connecticut prosecutors hope to persuade a jury of twelve that Komisarjevsky should be put to death for his...

I sat down to lunch the other day several tables removed from a gaggle of middle-age white guys in expensive suits. The folks I was meeting arrived late, so I had a chance to listen in on their conversation. Here is an annotated report.
"Have you been following the protest on Wall...