Something like hope twinkled in my client's eyes on Friday afternoon. A jury returned a verdict in his favor, awarding damages, including punitive dameges, against a woman who had accused him of sexual misconduct with her young daughter. The jury also awarded damages to a young girl who was alleged to have let a game of doctor go too far. Did my client, a man, get his reputation back?
It was a painful trial. In 2008, a girl who had just turned four showed an interest in another child's rear end. The girl's mother quizzed her, repeatedly, about this child's play. The girl eventually...
December 5, 2010
Wikileaks matters because government lies, and the United States Government is no exception. Liars don't want the truth exposed, so they prosecute those with the courage to tell it. It really is that simple. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise wants something the liars can confer, whether that be a job, access to power, or simply to be let alone to profit by playing the game of liar's poker known as good citizenship. But sometimes good men are not good citizens. When that happens, truth tellers are called criminals.
Julian Assange of Wikileaks is a truth teller. So he is being...
December 4, 2010
We missed a tremendous opportunity to conduct an experiment of great significance in our courts. That’s because we didn’t have a crystal ball. Who really would have thought that courtroom spectators would unwittingly try to transform the tranquil of a courtroom into the electronic version of a Roman coliseum, favoring we the mob with tidbits of the trial in short bursts of data sent almost compulsively from the proceedings.
Welcome to the world of Twitter.
The trial of Steven Hayes ended in a sentence of death, a result almost as foreseeable as the next sunrise. This was no...
December 3, 2010
It will be many years before a record is fully assembled about what role the media played in creating a death-chamber in the New Haven courtroom that was home to the trial of State v. Steven Hayes. Reporters flocked from around the world to behold the trial. Each seat was packed; television ews crews assembled in the pre-dawn hours so as not to miss a moment.
The hero of this morality play was Dr. William Petit, Jr. His every move was studied, and reported upon, as though he were something other than a man of sorrows, acquainted with unspeakable grief. Did he place his hand to his brow,...
December 2, 2010
November 29, 2010
Zealotry is an equal opportunity destroyer of peace and tranquility. Mohamed Osman Mohamud apparently wanted to destroy ours with a well-placed bomb...
November 28, 2010
The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to two men in 1901: Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, and an international pacifist named...
November 28, 2010
I spent a predawn hour or so in a limousine yesterday being whisked from the quiet of my home in Connecticut to the busy streets of Manhattan. The...
November 26, 2010
"Having recognized religious doctrines as illusions, we are at once faced by a further question: may not other cultural assets of which we hold a...
November 26, 2010
The law's senseless cruelty was on display again last week in a Bridgeport federal courtroom. No matter how many times I see a person ground to dust...
November 26, 2010
I am not shedding any tears over the conviction of former House Republican Majority Leader Thomas DeLay's conviction on money laundering charges...