Blog Posts

I submitted the following testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly in opposition to the so-called "Prosecutorial Accountability" act. The legislation is a solution to a problem that does not exist.
My name is Norman Pattis. I have represented people accused of...

I am not sure why anyone with a choice in the matter would choose to serve as a police officer in the City of Hartford. It’s not that the city faces major financial and social difficulties – some folks call it Little Chicago for a reason, its streets run with the blood of...

If you want to know what a legitimation crisis is, look no further than the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin. At night, you will see buildings burning. This in response to the police shooting of a young man named Jason Blake.
Jason is black.
The officer...

The panel of judges was uncomfortable. One judge wondered whether the United States government had brought the very issues it was complaining about upon itself by charging the defendant with crimes carrying crippling mandatory minimum prison sentences. Another judge was quick to defend the...

The First Amendment has for decades been interpreted to protect “inappropriate” speech, a fact well known to anyone who has sat for a bar examination in the past 40 years. So what was United States District Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto thinking this week when he revoked bail for Martin...

I envy physicians their proximity to death. It goes without saying that those who master the ups and downs of the life cycle must learn a thing or two about bracing folks for the end of life. I imagine that physicians-in-training get some counsel on how to advise a patient that his days are...

The public at large rarely gets a glimpse behind the curtain of justice, and thus can’t appreciate the ugly reality of the criminal justice system. Sadly, defendants are often punished for relying upon the very rights we say we revere. Nowhere is this more evident than in imposition of what...

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...

There’s a rough divide among criminal defense lawyers, distinguishing those who defend so-called white-collar cases from those who defend other crimes, such as murder, rape, robbery and child abuse. White collar cases, taking their name from the pressed and starched shirts of the power suite...

I am sure that in the rarefied atmosphere federal judges call home, gargantuan restitution orders look fair, just and reasonable. After all, what can be more just than requiring a defendant to pay back what he has stolen? The problem is the law's unreasoning way of calculating loss...