Evidence begins tomorrow in the penalty phase of State v. Hayes in Connecticut. The state seeks the death penalty. Mr. Hayes has already been convicted of sixteen counts ranging from capital felony murder to assault for his role in the deadly home invasion that left a mother and two daughters dead and one man, Dr. William Petit, Jr., seriously injured, in the summer of 2007.
What to expect in this next round?
A capital case is a two-part drama, proceeding, as lawyers say, in a bifurcated manner. In the first round, the state seeks to prove that the defendant committed a...
October 17, 2010
The first volume of Mark Twain's much-anticipated autobiography arrived the other day. At 700-plus pages, there is a telephone directory-like feel to it. It was the work of the second half of the author's life. He conceived it as an experiment, trying to determine whether he could be completely honest about his own life. To ease the inhibitions against candor, he would not let it be published until 100 years after his own death, the anniversary of which was on April 21 of this year.
There is a quaint quality to the preoccupation with candor and self-revelation. I find myself wondering...
October 17, 2010
I get many calls each week from people who believe they have been abused by the police. That is because for many years I was at the forefront of police misconduct litigation. But these days I rarely file a complaint against police officers. It is not that I have become a police groupie. Rather, I've read the handwriting on the wall. In the past decade, there has been a silent coup d' etat. Our courts have transformed themselves into the guardians of a police state in a stunning, and largely unnoticed, act of judicial activism. Their primary tool was a tricky legal doctrine known as qualified...
October 16, 2010
Twitter, for those of you who do not yet know this, is a social networking device that permits folks to send and receive brief, instantaneous messages of no more than 140 characters. You can send and receive messages from a computer, a cell phone or another electronic device, such as an Ipad. You can "tweet" anywhere an electronic signal is available, including a courtroom: the practice is known as "tweeting." Does Twitter belong in a courtroom?
Almost certainly not, I say. Reports from the trial of State v. Steven Hayes demonstrate why.
The invasion of the Petit home in...
October 14, 2010
October 12, 2010
I stormed out of a federal settlement conference the other day uttering intemperate words. The government has seized the life savings of a hard...
October 11, 2010
My wife and I are not television watchers. We're not elitists. We're just busy. Although our three kids have all fled the nest, we each have busy and...
October 10, 2010
Ron Nussle was beaten in prison one day by guards who retaliated against him when he threatened to alert a friend of his, then Gov. John Rowland,...
October 10, 2010
Why is the murder rate in the United States higher than that of any of the other 29 high-income member nations of the Organization for Economic...
October 10, 2010
History has an uncanny way of repeating itself, especially personal history. In high school, I tried and failed to find a group in which I was...
October 9, 2010
I've attended seminars at which Erwin Chemerinsky has spoken three or maybe four times. The first time, I was persuaded he was a genius. The second...