When I heard that Jeremiah Donovan stood on the courthouse steps yesterday and held a press conference regarding press reports about his ciient, Joshua Komisarjevsky, I was stunned. There is a gag order in place barring any of the lawyers in the case from speaking publicly. What possessed Jeremiah to flout the order?
The purpose of the press conference was to rebut reports in the press that Mr. Komisarjevsky had anally raped an 11-year-old girl during a brutal home invasion in Cheshire in 2007. The girl, her mother and her sister were assaulted and murdered by Mr. Komisarjevsky and his...
September 25, 2010
I won't pretend to be neutral about the death penalty. The state ought not to have the power to kill its citizens. Period. It is too awesome and final a power, and it has historically been used too many times for reasons having nothing to do with justice. The death penalty should be abolished in the United States, as it has been in Europe.
But we still kill, apparently with relish. Texas has put 463 people to death since 1976; Virginia has put 106 to death. No, wait. Make that 107 for Virginia. Last night the state killed a retarded woman, shooting 41-year-old Teresa Lewis full of...
September 24, 2010
Herewith a debate of sorts on the morality of the death penalty and the rule of law in the Connecticut case of State v. Steven Hayes. Is killing the killer every justified? Listen to the discussion. The debate took place on WPLR on September 23, 2010: http://wplr.com/av/podcasts.html
September 23, 2010
More than once I have heard a prosecutor in trial urge a judge to admit contested evidence: "The state cannot prove its case without this evidence, your honor," the argument goes. To which I typically respond: "So what?" The rules of evidence require reliable evidence. The trial deck is not supposed to be stacked in favor of conviction.
But the deck is so stacked. And few judges seem prepared to do much about it.
This is rarely so clear as in the case of expert testimony in cases with no victims, or victims who cannot testify. In such cases, the evidence of a crime must be...
September 23, 2010