One editorialist at least had the courage to put it bluntly: Jerry Sandusky deserves 400 years in prison. The writer was outraged that the 68-year-old man received a sentence of only 30-60 years in prison after his conviction on 45 counts of child molestation. Sandusky is, so the writer contends, a monster.
I wonder whether another monster isn’t the person calling for a prison sentence impossible to serve. Find me the man or woman who can serve a 400-year sentence, and I will rethink my general skepticism about miracles.
We love prison in this the land of the free. The...
October 11, 2012
“That’s just hearsay.”
You hear that remark all the time. It conveys a sense of unreliability. The statement, so dismissed, just doesn’t count. You can’t bet on it.
Yet hearsay is everywhere, and we cannot live without it.
The definition of hearsay sounds convoluted, but it is really quite simple: Hearsay is an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. What does that mean? Simply put, admitting into evidence in a court proceeding a statement uttered at some other time for some other purpose.
It’s all right...
October 11, 2012
Richard LaPointe is one very lucky man. It might strike you as odd to say that of a fellow serving what amounts to a life term for the rape and arson-murder of his wife’s 88-year-old grandmother. But, 20 years after a jury found him guilty as charged, he’s won the right to a new trial. That is because a group of concerned citizens never stopped believing in his innocence.
When Bernice Martin was found dead in her apartment in 1987, suspicion quickly turned to LaPointe. He lived nearby. He had visited the victim earlier the day she was murdered. He was seen in the vicinity...
October 9, 2012
The news did not surprise me, neither did it devastate me. It simply left me hollow, spent and empty. You see, Mark Kravitz died since this paper last went to print. He was 62 years old, and he suffered from Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
We all knew his death was coming. The disease from which he suffered is remorseless. I wrote about watching him waste away some months ago. He was one of my favorite federal judges. Appearing in his courtroom was a feast of both mind and spirit. He had a way of bringing out the best in me. I cried private tears when I realized the news was true and that...
October 4, 2012
September 28, 2012
Lawyers ought to be required to ride circuit, to travel to different regions of the country and appear in courts and before judges they do not know....
September 26, 2012
Never doubt for a moment that law is at its core politics. If you do doubt it, then read Jeffrey Toobin’s latest book, “The Oath: The...
September 25, 2012
I know a thing or two about suing police officers. Indeed, I paid for a few college educations with the proceeds of money earned in the well of the...
September 21, 2012
A funny thing happened in the court the other day. I notified my adversaries I intended to call an expert or two. The other side asked for a hearing...
September 17, 2012
The literal and figurative firestorm erupting worldwide over the YouTube film “The Innocence of Islam” provokes the sense of despair one...
September 13, 2012
If you doubt for one moment our membership in the animal kingdom, spend some time in family court in a high-conflict case. I swear you can all but...