Robert Ferguson's book on the American criminal justice system, Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment (Harvard University Press, 2014) ought to be must reading for every legislator, judge and prosecutor in the United States. You will note that I did not include criminal defense lawyers in the list of people who need to read this book -- that is because they already know the truth Ferguson speaks: the criminal justice system is a wasteful failure.
Drawing from literature, moral and political philosophy, legal scholarship and reported cases, the book asks questions that are too often...
May 4, 2014
Perhaps the single most important moment in the debate about whether to approve the Green Haven condominium association project on Bethany’s Halter Farm property took place more than a year ago. That’s when Patsy Weiner, then a member of the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission, took the floor at a town meeting to explain the virtues of what proponent’s call co-housing plans.
“You can have co-housing associations for all sorts of purposes,” she said, in her dry, timorous sort of way. “There could be a group devoted to equestrian...
May 3, 2014
Death comes swiftly, with a crushing finality, leaving the living numb with grief and overcome with loss. Our comings and goings remain stunning mysteries. When a life is taken at the hand of another, anger rises like a tidal wave.
So we are angry today at Christopher Plaskon. “I did it. Just arrest me,” he said, as police responded to the Jonathan Law High School in Milford, where 16-year-old Maren Sanchez had been fatally stabbed.
As with so many killings, the question is not whodunit, but why was it done?
Mr. Plaskon is a juvenile, but because he has been...
April 30, 2014
One measure of our humanity is how we treat the least among us. The future will judge us harshly, I am afraid. This is especially so regarding our prisons. We’ve taken a punitive turn in social philosophy, and have created penal colonies in our midst. What’s worse, we’ve fallen in love with these islands of hatred.
“How can you represent those people” I am sometimes asked.
Why this one is accused of murder; that one has been accused of selling narcotics; this one sexually abused a client; that one stole money or forged a document in connection with a...
April 27, 2014
April 20, 2014
The process, criminal defense lawyers like to say, is the punishment. Nowhere is this so true as in the low-level criminal courts in Connecticut,...
April 14, 2014
Anarchism is given a bad rap by folks who rarely take the trouble to understand what they are criticizing. Alexander Berkman's classic text on...
April 12, 2014
April 16, 2024 – Connecticut lost a town last night, but it did not lose either territory or population. Two suburban entities...
April 11, 2014
I was in the chambers of a judge I respect a great deal trying to reach a plea bargain in a complex case the other day. Well before trial, he made...
April 10, 2014
The lawyer was at the very least honest, even if the words he spoke were chilling.
“Does the Internal Revenue Service take the position...
April 5, 2014
I was startled to learn that manipulation of federal "no-fly" lists takes place simply as a means of recruiting potential informants: Young Moslem...