A Victim As Person Of The Year?

At year's end news organizations like to mark time by doing such things as selecting, and commenting upon, the year's top stories. Some, like Time magazine, vote for a person of the year, as it did in selecting Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, as ther 2010 Person of the Year. The New Haven Register, by contrast, selected a crime victim as this year's most notable person: It is an odd and troubling choice.
The 2007 slaying of a mother and her two children in Cheshire, Connecticut, has become a part of the national psychic landscape, and last year's trial of one of the...
December 29, 2010

End-of-Life Planning and A Noble Death?

Someone tell me: Just how did it happen that I need to defend my right to die? Death is part of life, the tail end of a bargain none of us struck. Asserting that I have a right to die is gibberish. Would that I had a right to remain alive; that would be a right worth any fight. Death is a necessity, not a right.
But we must assert the right to die against government. Somehow, the state has become a guarantor of life, a gift it did not give. We must assert the right to die and to remain autonomous against the power of strangers who would seek to keep us alive against our will, but not...
December 27, 2010

The Absent Character In Best Crime Reporting, 2010

I read this year's Best Crime Reporting with a guilty sort of pleasure. It was a gift, so reading it over the holidays was appropriate enough. But wasn't I taking a few weeks off? Why the appeal of crime stories in a season devoted to time away from the grind of a criminal law practice?
The series has been published for a number of years now by an imprint of Harper Collins. The series' editors, Otto Penzler of Manhattan's Mysterious Bookshop, and Edgar Allen Poe Award winning author Thomas Cook, select an editor for each year's edition. That editor reads through nominations, and selects...
December 27, 2010

To The New Year!

Last year's end-of-the-year essay provoked a chain of events that turned into something strangely liberating. I wrote of the great emotional travail that comes of representing those facing imprisonment. Bearing others' sorrow oppresses, and I felt the weight of it especially keenly in 2009. I wrote, and some appreciated the candor, others scorned what they saw as too much emotion. By mid-year, lines were drawn. I received snarky comments about whether my mental health had improved. I seized the opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff, and have cut loose from old associations that...
December 26, 2010

How About Accountability Statements for Juries?

December 24, 2010
The criminal justice system stumbles along on the road mumbling lip service to complete transparency, but we still lie to jurors. When jurors find...

Mickey Going Bye-Bye

December 22, 2010
It is now official: Mickey Sherman will be heading to federal prison this spring. He was sentenced today by United States District Court Judge Janet...

Why No Ideological Warfare In State High Courts?

December 22, 2010
When there is a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court, legal academics, interest groups, and journalists go into overdrive speculating about who...

Schumer's Sex Offender Hysteria

December 20, 2010
No one wants children exposed to men and women who might do them harm. This instinct to protect the innocent is at the very core of the sex offender...

The Credibility Gap In Waterbury

December 18, 2010
Experienced criminal defense lawyers and even judges know a simple truth: Ask the wrong questions, and the truth will slip through your fingers....

Temperature Rising In Waterbury

December 16, 2010
If I were a betting man, I'd wager a few dollars, but not the mortgage money, on the possibility of indictments arising from federal probe of 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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