Score another victory for what I call the regal species of judicial activism, the school of through that holds the king can do no wrong. By a vote of 5-4, the United States Supreme Court once again granted a prosecutor immunity from a federal law suit on grounds of prosecutorial immunity.
The facts of the case are shocking. A New Orleans man was sent to death row because a prosecutor failed to perform his duty, this time the Constitutionally required duty of turning over evidence that showed the defendant was not the culprit. Given the vagaries of the law of prosecutorial...
March 30, 2011
Several weeks ago, The New York Times carried a front-page story entitled, "Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message." I clipped the piece and set it aside for later reading. My intention was to ridicule the focus of the article, a woman who goes by the pseudonym Brigitte Gabriel. It’s too easy to stir hatred, I thought. Let me try to bring her down a notch or two.
Then I read the story, which led me to read her latest book, They Must Be Stopped. Now I am on the cusp of checking out the organization she founded, ACT! For America. She’s no dummy, this pseudonymous...
March 27, 2011
I don’t know why the government is prosecuting Barry Bonds. It seems like a waste of limited resources. Yes, I believe that the former big-league slugger took steroids. I also think it is likely he lied to a grand jury and to federal agents. But in the larger scheme of things, does this really matter? Our government lies all the time, routinely engaging in trickery and deception in the course of its investigations. Our courts condone these lies because strategic uses of deception serve legitimate law-enforcement interests; why does the government get to lie while we the people are held...
March 26, 2011
What do you do when a judge won’t sign a warrant? If you are a person accused, you breath a sigh of relief and thank the heavens for an independent judiciary. But what if you are a police officer, and the judge refuses to bless your handiwork? What happens then? In Connecticut, you threaten to arrest the judge for hindering prosecution.
Bantam Superior Court Judge Corinne Klatt is accused of coercion and "a violation of the criminal law" by a member of the Connecticut State Police because she refused to sign an arrest warrant prepared by the trooper. Police state anyone? Now...
March 25, 2011
March 24, 2011
In my next life, I want to be a prosecutor. I want to live in a fantasyland without consequences. I want to make mistakes, and never be held...
March 20, 2011
Should Ophadell Williams have ever been let anywhere near the steering wheel of a tour bus? Somehow, this question is now being asked by...
March 20, 2011
This week’s Connecticut Law Tribune features an interview with F. Lee Bailey, who, at 77, remains sharp as a tack. The interview saddened me, in a...
March 19, 2011
This current New York Review of Books features a savage review of All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age,...
March 19, 2011
Although I grew up in Chicago and Detroit, I became a New Englander the day I started to read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Decades later, I...
March 18, 2011
Delay is often the best friend of a criminal defense lawyer: witnesses move away, their recollections fail, the state loses evidence. Things really...