Blog Posts

I’m not hopping on the bandwagon circling the Santa Clara County, California, courthouse. Don’t add my name to the million-plus names of those calling for the scalp of Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky. Far from a goat, Judge Persky is a hero.
Would that there were more judges...

Gov. Dannel Malloy will soon be given an opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to the Second Chance Society to which he committed more than one year ago. His stated goal is to reduce the number of people who go to prison unnecessarily. He can demonstrate the commitment by refusing to sign...

I’m at a loss to explain to my client why she cannot have the book I sent her. But it is so. The warden will not permit her to accept a Daily Roman Missal sent to her from Amazon. Why? It is bound in leather, the reasoning goes. Really? Do prison officials expect her to fashion a weapon from...

Forgive me for being churlish, curmudgeonly, even, but Apple Inc. has thus far fired far wide of the mark in its dispute with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. What’s at stake in the iPhone controversy is far more significant than balancing privacy and security.
The federal...

Framing the dispute between Apple Inc. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the need to balance security and liberty tilts the debate in favor of the government. A more candid framing destroys the government’s assertions: the conflict pits slavery against freedom. Who favors...

Odds are, you have never visited someone imprisoned for life, or for many decades. Prisoners are outcasts, beloved, if at all, only by their families; remembered, if only periodically, by their lawyers. We give them numbers and then forbid their jailers to get too close to numbered...

Just why the office of the chief state's attorney is hell-bent on killing people is one of those deeper mysteries I am destined never to understand. But there stood Harry Weller, one of the state's smartest appellate lawyers and prosecutors, in the well of the Connecticut Supreme Court, urging...

I can never really tell when a client is serious about suicide. My hunch is that those who talk about it won’t do it. It’s the silent types who from time to time cross that dark line. It is devastating when they do so. In every case, you look back for signs, cues and portents. Sure,...

Law students are taught that there are four factors a judge should consider when a criminal defendant is sentenced: specific deterrence, general deterrence, rehabilitation and retribution. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is now proposing addition of a fifth factor: future criminality.
Buckle...

Gov. Dannel Malloy is calling for reform of some of the state's draconian sentencing laws, proposing that mere drug possession be a misdemeanor, and calling for the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses. That's all well and good, as a start.
Here's where we...