Despite the fact that I spend as much time as I can in courtrooms, I still enjoy reading fiction about the law and lawyering. I worry always about what I am missing as I stand in the middle of someone else’s storm. Legal fiction provides perspective, and, frankly, entertainment.
Why is it that not one writer of legal fiction deals realistically with the business of making a living at the practice of law? Is the topic too difficult to render? Or is it that we don’t want to be honest about legal fees?
Few clients can afford the lawyer they want, and few private lawyers...
July 2, 2014
A lawyer representing himself, the saying goes, has a fool for a client. So what of a physician who decides to represent himself in a high-stakes criminal case? Is he, too, a fool?
Dr. Lishan Wang is charged with murder. He is alleged to have shot to death another physician, Dr. Vajinder Pal Toor, in Branford in 2010. The motive? Dr. Wang's suspicion that Dr. Toor had something to do with Dr. Wang's being fired at the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn back in 2008, a move Dr. Wang appears to believe ruined his medical career.
If Dr. Wang were a better shot, he'd be...
June 27, 2014
I've noticed a certain uneasiness in the chambers of several judges. They don't like talking about plea bargaining in any public way. Indeed, in one case, the state prepared a draft of a waiver a client was going to sign as a condition of entering a plea. The state included the term "plea bargain" in the document.
"Can't you take that term out?" the judge asked.
The state obliged.
I wonder why we are uneasy about talking about plea bargaining. I suspect it is because the term sets up a discussion of a reality the courts cannot acknowledge: defendants who go to trial in...
June 21, 2014
One of the best scenes in “The Wizard of Oz” is when Toto, Dorothy’s dog, pulls back the curtain on the Great Oz, exposing a terrified man hiding behind his fearful machinery. One lesson: Appearances are deceiving.
I thought of that scene the other day as I read the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in a case called State v. Elson.
Mr. Elson isn’t the sort of guy folks rally to support. In 2004, he got liquored up and went on a rampage after a coed at the Western Connecticut State University rebuffed his romantic advances. He assaulted the victim...
June 20, 2014
June 12, 2014
Jerad and Amanda Miller thought the revolution had begun, so they shot a couple of police officers at a pizzeria and then walked over to a local...
June 8, 2014
I've never understood why some criminal defense lawyers feel the need to make a great public display about how they only represent those whom they...
June 4, 2014
I have no idea whether Phil Mickelson, one of the world's premier golfers and three-time winner of the Masters golf tournament, is guilty of insider...
May 29, 2014
Oh, Dannell, what a disappointment you are. The governor's been pumping the judiciary full of geriatric pals, positioning them for $100,000 a year...
May 28, 2014
Twenty or so years ago, I wrote one of the most difficult legal briefs of my career: The task was to compare and contrast the nature of the crimes...
May 25, 2014
Here’s a thought experiment: Pretend for the moment that Elliot Rodger had not gone on a killing spree in California. Put it out of your mind,...