Blog Posts

Experienced criminal defense lawyers and even judges know a simple truth: Ask the wrong questions, and the truth will slip through your fingers. Sometimes it is all about plausible deniability, a truth parsed so finely that the difference between fact and fiction becomes indistinguishable. That's...

Immigration-speak is a language I have yet to learn. It sounds strange. It doesn’t quite fit the world in which my clients and I live. When I was told that a client of mine had no "status" in the United States, I wondered what that meant. He’s been here since he was six years old. He...

If I were a betting man, I'd wager a few dollars, but not the mortgage money, on the possibility of indictments arising from federal probe of the Waterbury state's attorney's office and a local defense lawyer as early as next week. Uncle Sam has been poking around in the Brass City for the better...

The man was not happy to be placed on a suicide watch, and he blamed me for it. I was responsible for the call. I made it. His situation was dire, and when he told me not once, but three times, of his thoughts of self-destruction, it struck me that his response would be perfectly rational. The...

Remind me not to move to Bedford, New Hampshire. Parents in town want the right to rate and approve all of the books that are taught in their children’s high school. This way they can object to books they find offensive: books like Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting...

Much though I applaud the reasoning supporting U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson’s decision to declare parts of the new health care law unconstitutional, I deplore the result. We need a publicly financed general health care system to which all Americans are entitled. What we do not need is...

What can Howard Stern teach about legal fees? Not much, really. You see, Howard gets what Howard wants. The rest of us lead lives of quiet desperation under the scrutiny of bar regulators.
Stern has been a radio personality for 35 years. At 56, he is one of the nation’s top draws. When...

The next time members of the Connecticut General Assembly are asked to consider whether the prosecutors of this state should have routine access to investigative grand juries, they ought to take a trip to the Walker Reception and Special Management Unit. That's a euphemism for prison. It's located...

Is Julian Assange the new Martin Luther?
The significance of the Protestant Reformation lies not so much in the proliferation of new, and non-Catholic, theologies: Early Christianity was a wild cacophony of conflicting views of Jesus. It took centuries for orthodoxy to emerge. For well more...

There was a time in the northeastern United States when an innkeeper could expect a few curious customers to respond to signs reading: "George Washington slept here." The man must have laid his head to rest somewhere during his founding travels. Why not at Aunt Sally's bed and breakfast? This is a...