Blog Posts

Preventive detention. Read the words. Repeat them aloud. Say them louder. Write them on a pad of paper. Then scrawl them on a piece of cardboard with a magic marker. Preventive detention. Holding someone on mere suspicion of who they are or what they might do. The Supreme Court now says that it is...

It actually felt like summer the other day: a long, languid sort of day with sunshine, no place to go, and fields humming with life. After a winter in which we saw one outbuilding collapse and the roof on another begin to crumble, the day felt like a gift. So when evening came, I decided to...

I recall a few fist fights when I was a kid that had me angry enough to kill someone. Indeed, had a gun been readily at hand, I just might have pulled a trigger. Anger is a cheap drug. It is easy to yield to its seduction, especially when you are young and all the emotions come flooding in during...

I was stunned into something approaching silence the other night as I listened to the audience at a community group meeting in New Haven rage about gun violence. I was the defense lawyer paired with a state and a federal prosecutor to talk to those assembled. Guns are bad news, I said. Get caught...

I don’t know what level of trickery, or simple intellectual dishonesty, permits the Senate to accuse some judges, but not others, of “judicial activism,” but this specious parlor game has got to stop. This week, Senate Republicans killed the nomination of Goodwin Liu to the...

I was accused by an old friend the other day of getting soft and mellow. He blamed it on my psychoanalyst. You see, I spend four hours a week, mostly at a time when truly mellow folks are getting out bed, free associating about what crosses my mind. I’ve been at it for a couple of years now....

About 44 percent of all those we release from prison are expected to return within three years. To many, this high rate of recidivism represents a failure of the criminal justice system. If our prisons aren’t rehabilitating people and deterring them from the commission of future crimes,...

The conventional wisdom is to advise a client contemplating a defamation action against filing suit unless he is sure he can withstand the scrutiny of an angry adversary. Claiming a damaged reputation is a risky thing to do if your reputation is already questionable. Besides, merely...

I poked my head into the courtroom in which jury selection drags along, draining the state’s coffers of needed cash, in the case of State v. Komisarjevsky. The courtroom was all but empty. There were two layers on each side, all looking weary. And to the far right, taking it all in, sat Dr....

I was a little bemused to read the headline on a recent news story reflecting a debate about whether Osama bin Laden had, in fact, been murdered. If ever there were a fellow in need of killing, it was he. But the discussion is an important one, reflecting, as it does, the distinction between mere...