Blog Posts

Hurricane Irene did not blow my family and me off the face of the Earth, but it did down power lines running along our property. We’ve been without power, and water, and telephone, and the Internet for days. My office, located just a couple miles from my home has also been cut off from the...

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...

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...

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was all smiles yesterday as he strolled out of a Manhattan courtroom, the conditions of his pre-trial confinement reduced to the vanishing point. Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney, all but conceded that there are reasons to doubt the complaining...

I learned many years ago never to reject a gift given by a prosecutor. So yesterday, after a jury was selected and we were about to begin evidence in a statutory rape case, I tried to keep my mouth shut when the prosecution announced it was dropping the case against my client.


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Our youngest son is mid-way through medical school. At dinner the other night, he and my wife were discussing the controversy surrounding neckties in hospitals. It turns out that physicians, though scrupulous about washing their hands between patients, aren’t quite as careful with their ties....

I was in prison yesterday, visiting clients and potential clients. Between meetings, I sat in a professional visiting room, where so-called "contact" visits are allowed: in other words, I was able to shake my client’s hand; there was no barrier separating us. The door to my room was open, and...

Criminal defense lawyers know an elemental truth: you cannot be in two places at once. But it sometimes happens that two calendars are called at the same in different places. When that happens, you simply arrive late at one courthouse, as I did today.
When I arrived at my second...

The law is, and always shall be, a late-comer to any crisis. By the time legal doctrines and rules evolve, take shape and respond to a crisis, the crisis is often passed. We lawyers are forced sometimes to look to other professions to learn more about what is going on in our own midst. I read this...

Just how tight is the market for legal fees just now? Tight enough that some private defense lawyers are complaining that too many defendants are being offered the services of a public defender, thus depriving lawyers of the chance to earn a fee.
The Sixth Amendment to the United States...