Blog Posts

The Winter 2009-2010 edition of Censorship News arrived the other day. The lead articule stunned me. It turns out that Yale University Press lost its nerve and succumbed to fear last summer. It deleted cartoons that Moslems might find offensive. The rationale? The book might stimulate violence...

Virginia lawmakers are on the cusp of making a big mistake: They are about to make the restrictions imposed on all persons convicted of sex offenses even more stringent.
In theory, it all sounds like a great idea. Protect our children from risk. Who could oppose the concept? But the devil is...

I cannot fathom the grief of Dr. William Petit. I hope never to know such pain. And I pray that if I am ever undone by evil my neighbors will have the good sense to leave me in peace and not make me into a veritable rock star of rage.
Those of you not from Connecticut may not recognize the...

Jury selection starts Tuesday in a New Haven, Connecticut courtroom in the case of State v. Hayes. If the name means nothing to you, that's because you have been seduced by the symbolism of it all: Most folks refer to the matter as the Petit case, using the name of the three victims of the July...

Prison. Say the word aloud. Prison. There. You have said it. What associations emerge? Is it a place of punishment and anger? Is it a place of quiet redemption? Or is it no place at all? A sort of black hole into which what we fear is thrown and, with less effort than we imagine,...

Cameras in the courtroom are a stupid idea. We've been dabbling with the televised court proceedings in Connecticut. My experience to date suggests that, at least at the trial level, all the public really wants is a picture of the person accused of a heinous crime. This is titillation, not...

Sometimes the things you learn in school are a whole lot more important than the lessons a teacher thinks he is teaching. Sometimes what you learn is that it can be scary to stand alone, apart from the crowd. I think you learned about how mean crowds can be this week when the Mesquite school board...

Sometimes the beast doesn't merely roar. Sometimes it listens.
The writ I posted yesterday did not need to be filed. The Department of Correction has agreed to provide the client with individual transportation to court in the mornings, thus making it possible to get a good night's sleep. And,...

RETURN: JANUARY 19, 2010
GEORGE LENIART : SUPERIOR COURT
:
VS. : J. D. OF NEW LONDON
:
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, :
BRIAN K. MURPHY :

V E R I F I E D C O M P L A I N T
1. ...

The last time I saw Judge Gerry Esposito he was presiding in Juvenile Court in Torrington, a hard-scrabble, hard-luck city in the Northern part of Connecticut.
"What are you doing here?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye. I rarely appear in juvenile court.
"It's a sex case, judge," I said....