Blog Posts

The Choate Rosemary Hall school in Wallingford, Connecticut, is one of the nation's premiere prep schools. Kids go there with hopes of a bright future. Most are boarders, but many are day students. All live in a privileged bubble. But they are still kids, and kids do stupid things. So, frankly,...

I wish I knew why motorists stopped to gawk at every bit of roadside carnage. We are drawn almost against our will to stare at the sorrow of others. I suspect the same impulse is at work in the trial of Steven Hayes. We cannot get enough of the horror of it all. It's a slasher film made real....

The penalty phase of the prosecution of Steven Hayes has been nothing short of bizarre. The best defense thus far seems to be a twisted variant of "the devil made me do it." When the defense introduced the prison diaries of co-defendant Joshua Komisarjevsky as mitigating evidence, jaws dropped:...

There was a short, but significant, drama in a Hartford, Connecticut, courtroom earlier this week. It lasted all of 25 minutes. It was a trial in which a federal jury heard evidence about the value of Malik Jones's life. The jury heard from one witness, his daughter, now sixteen. She was three...

Death, we like to say in the law, is different. Hence, the evolution of differing standards for capital cases. But the application of these standards is steeped in the same hypocrisy affecting non-capital criminal cases. The criminal justice system remains what it has always been: a farce with...

"The testimony in this case reveals a crime of singular atrocity. It is, in a sense, inexplicable; but it is not thereby rendered less inhuman or repulsive. It was deliberately planned and prepared for during a considerable period of time. It was executed with every feature of callousness and...

The Biblical story of Job can be read on several levels. On the one hand, Job is the faithful servant of a powerful God, never failing in his faith, even when he is undone by sorrows. It is also the story of a man made sport of by unseen powers: When God succumbs to Satan's dare and permits Job to...

The first volume of Mark Twain's much-anticipated autobiography arrived the other day. At 700-plus pages, there is a telephone directory-like feel to it. It was the work of the second half of the author's life. He conceived it as an experiment, trying to determine whether he could be completely...

Evidence begins tomorrow in the penalty phase of State v. Hayes in Connecticut. The state seeks the death penalty. Mr. Hayes has already been convicted of sixteen counts ranging from capital felony murder to assault for his role in the deadly home invasion that left a mother and two daughters dead...

I get many calls each week from people who believe they have been abused by the police. That is because for many years I was at the forefront of police misconduct litigation. But these days I rarely file a complaint against police officers. It is not that I have become a police groupie. Rather,...