Returning to the State of Nature, One Newtown at a Time

Enough, finally, is enough. Your right to bear arms does not yield the right to kill at random. Doesn’t last week’s killing spree at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown give you even a moment’s hesitation? Or are you still going to hide behind the facile quip that guns don’t kill people, people do? Even the tobacco lobby was not that cynical; it just lied about causation, trying to hide the consequences of smoking. You cannot hide the 20 children killed by gunfire.
Twenty little coffins will carry the bodies of the elementary school children killed by a...
December 17, 2012

Double Standards at the Courthouse Door

There’s a new security regime in the Connecticut federal courts, so let me gripe about it a bit: You see, lawyers are now required not just to pass through metal detectors, place their briefcases on conveyor belts scanning for bombs and some such, remove their computers from briefcases, and empty their pockets. All that was standard fare. Now lawyers are required to take off their belts as well.
“What’s up with the new security requirements?” I asked a court security officer as I pulled the belt from pants.
“New orders from up top.”
I...
December 13, 2012

Color Blind? Or Wilfully Blind?

When I have an African-American defendant in a criminal trial, I like to ask potential jurors the following question: What do you think of race relations in the United States — are they good; bad; is there room for improvement?
Almost everyone answers that there is room for improvement. What would you improve if you could do so, I then ask. Answers vary.
Don’t bother asking the Judicial Branch in Connecticut. Jury administrators — the folks responsible for assuring that a fair cross-section of the community reports for jury duty — just don’t care about...
December 13, 2012

Guns and Guilty By Association

I suppose I should be relieved that the nation’s top cop came waltzing into New Haven the other day talking tough about gun violence, and promising safer streets. But I’m not.
As it turns out, Attorney General Eric Holder was selling the same flawed premises of the war on drugs, a never-ending crusade that has done little to stem drug use, but plenty to fill prisons with non-violent offenders.
Operation Longevity is the name of this new initiative. It’s a tawdry form of guilt by association. At a press conference attended by Holder, Mayor John DeStefano Jr., New...
December 6, 2012

Jim Crow In The Jury Room

November 29, 2012
Call me a racist, but Connecticut does not do enough to assure that criminal defendants face a jury of their peers.
I’ve just finished...

Assisted Suicide and the State

November 29, 2012
FEW THINGS TERRIFY ME AS MUCH as the thought of being kept alive, indefinitely — hooked to machines, monitored, maintained and held in the land...

Cy Vance's Expensive Fantasy Life

November 21, 2012
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., might be one of those understated legal geniuses who see things in life’s tawdry fact patterns...

"You Can't Govern Us; We Quit"

November 15, 2012
Secession anyone? The last time there was a groundswell of support for the states to secede from the union, we ended up fighting a bloody civil war....

Time to Repeal the Second Amendment?

November 14, 2012
I’ll be starting trial this week in Norwich. My client is accused of murder. The victim was shot to death, point blank, with a hand gun. The...

Destiny and Demographics

November 12, 2012
So we’re to have four more years of Barack Obama in the White House. Good, I say. Better him than a throwback to a 1960s sitcom. Once the...

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Taking Back the Courts
Norm Pattis Taking Back the Courts

The Wizard of Oz was one of my favorites movies as a kid. Little did I know judges were so much like the wizard, hiding behind empty trappings of power. This book tells you things you need to know about what really goes on in court. Read it, weep, and then demand that the courts do better.

In the Trenches
Norm Pattis In the Trenches

Plenty of lawyers write about the law, but few who write try cases. Judge for yourself whether I talk the talk and walk the walk in this collection of occasional essays about life in the law's trenches.

Juries and Justice
Norm Pattis Juries and Justice

How prepared are you to take seriously the notion that 'we the people' are, in fact, sovereign? Discover the secret, and unused, power of jurors. 'Ask why; then nullify.'

Norm Pattis

About Norm

Norm Pattis is a Connecticut based trial lawyer focused on high stakes criminal cases and civil right violations. He is a veteran of more than 150 jury trials, many resulting in acquittals for people charged with serious crimes, multi-million dollar civil rights and discrimination verdicts, and scores of cases favorably settled.

© Norm Pattis is represented by Elite Lawyer Management, managing agents for Exceptional American Lawyers
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