Blog Posts

How did Jose Baez, the lawyer for Casey Anthony, win this most difficult of trials? The chattering class wants to know. Pundits from one end of the coast to another had her convicted and on her way to death row. They’re all hungover today, nursing a sense that something, they are not quite...

You are disappointed, aren’t you? Perhaps even enraged. Why no verdict since the O.J. Simpson case has so offended you. Of course, O.J. murdered his ex-wife and her lover. Of course, Casey Anthony killed her toddler so she could party. Today’s verdict is another example of why the...

I was late to develop an interest in the Casey Anthony case in Florida. A jury deliberates today on whether she murdered her toddler. If she is found guilty, she faces the death penalty. The case is a long way from the jurisdiction I call home. I have no dog in the fight.
What caught my eye...

It is not at all clear to me why the Founding Fathers matter. I understand the significance of the colonies’ break with Britain. And the creation of a new secular order, a federal government of limited powers binding together independent states, endures today. But resorting to the founders,...

Now that the dust is settling in the Casey Anthony case, trial watchers are going to feel all dressed up with no place to go. I say head to Mangum, Oklahoma, and grab a seat in the Bobbi Parker trial. You will see one of the nation’s best trial lawyers, Garvin Isaacs of Oklahoma City,...

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...

Tim Moynahan has been practicing law longer than many readers of this post have been alive. He's a hero of mine, and so I asked him to read my new book, Taking Back the Courts. Here is his take. I hope it inspires you to read the book, which available at Amazon.com.
"One of Norm...

James “Whitey” Bulger a hero? Not really. Not ever. He stands accused of murdering 19 people, and has a list of charges longer than Pinocchio’s nose at tax time. But Bulger’s name can go down in the annals of law enforcement right next to former Senator Frank...

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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The federal government might have James “Whitey” Bulger, 81, in custody, but Bulger, an alleged former crime boss accused of racketeering and involvement in 19 murders, has the FBI right were he has always had it: by the short hairs. It remains to be seen whether the feds will come...