Blog Posts

There is a hearing this week before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. On the agenda, reauthorization of the Adam Walsh Act. The witness list includes spokespersons from the Department of Justice, the United States Marshals, the...

I love John Brown. I have for a long, long time. Indeed, one of the best books I have read in the past decade is about the abolitionist. Russell Banks’s fictional biography, Cloudsplitter, is what fire would be like if it could be compressed into two dimensions. My mind burned as I read that...

If you want to see an independent judiciary in action, look West, to France. The nation’s judges went on strike last week. Jurists laid down their gavels and refused to attend to all but the most serious cases. Why? France President Nicolas Sarkozy played the Willie Horton card. Go ahead and...

Shame on Christopher Lee. The New York Congressmen took his libidinal dog out for a walk, got caught, and promptly resigned from the House of Representatives, thus raising the inevitable question: what is wrong with this country?
I say shame on Mr. Lee not because he is a cad. Sure, he...

Hell froze over one day last year and two men skated to freedom, set free by a judge of the Superior Court, who found that they were convicted in error and were the victims of manifest injustice. Last week, the state’s lawyers appeared before the State Supreme Court and urged the court to...

It is not at all clear why President Barack Obama has abandoned the federal courts, but he has. One of nine judgeships is vacant. There are 17 vacancies on the federal appellate court, and 85 vacant district court seats. The president has not even nominated enough candidates to fill half of these...

It is not at all clear why President Barack Obama has abandoned the federal courts, but he has. One of nine judgeships is vacant. There are 17 vacancies on the federal appellate court, and 85 vacant district court seats. The president has not even nominated enough candidates to fill half of these...

Among the many things a lawyer learns is where to sit in a courtroom. In Connecticut, there is an unwritten custom that parties with the burden of proof sit closest to the jury. Hence, plaintiffs and the State get the premiere seats at trial, the ones closest to the jury. This custom is supported...

Scores of folks have sent me emails generated by a group called Citizens for Change, America. They want me to hear their cries for justice, and to sign on to the fight to have the courts declare retroactive application of the federal sex offender registration act unconstitutional. My first response...

One of the most terrifying cases I ever handled involved the state’s decision to seize a child upon birth and to place it in the care of strangers. The theory supporting this cradle-robbing was predictive neglect. Because the parents were suspected of having shaken another of their babies and...