Blog Posts

I watched videos of the recent rioting in London the other day, and two words sprang to mind: Joseph Schumpeter. And I wondered who, in North America, will throw the first brick. These thoughts filled me with dread, exhilaration and hope.
Schumpeter was an Austrian economist active in the...

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the Connecticut Department of Public Safety forensic laboratory is at the eye of a storm. A federal review of the lab, its policies and procedures has resulted in a 160-page report highly critical of the lab. Recent DNA tests, the so-called gold standard of the...

I wanted to fall in love with James Stewart’s Tangled Webs, (Penguin Press, New York: 2011). The subtitle alone persuaded me the author was on to something important: "How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff." But my love was not to be. I read my way...

Welcome: I'm the "deep and progressive thinker" you linked to. I also have a pony tail. And, what's worst of all, I think Rakofsky's claims are pretty interesting. But then again, I turned my card in to the guildmasters on the blawgosphere long ago.
Joseph Rakofsky made a little money this...

My client was sentenced to 45 years in prison yesterday. As sentences for the crime of murder go, it was lenient. After trial, most defendants are slapped with 50 or 60 years. The result troubled one of the jurors in the case. The juror will never have the chance to speak her conscience in a form...

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We were supposed to forget about our sorrows at the sight of Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, on the house floor, preparing to cast her vote, one of the last needed, on the House approval of the new deficit-reduction plan. Never mind she was shot in the head and left for dead in Tuscon in January....

It has been open season on Joshua Komisarjevsky since the day he was arrested in July 2007, and for good reason: There is little doubt that he slaughtered a mother and her two daughters in their home. He also beat the man of the house, Dr. William Petit, Jr., senseless. It is no wonder that many...

He sat across the courtroom from me, next to a phalanx of new lawyers. I was on the witness stand, answering questions about a case I had handled almost ten years ago. When the proceedings began, I did not notice him. But our eyes met. I nodded ever so slightly. He nodded back. I still find it...

Each year, as predictable as the change of seasons, a few clients charged with crimes fire me: they believe I am doing nothing for them. They are replaced by new clients who have fired their lawyers: they believe the prior lawyers were doing nothing too. The cause of all this is the snail’s...