Unconfirmed reports suggest that the Connecticut Department of Public Safety forensic laboratory is at the eye of a storm. A federal review of the lab, its policies and procedures has resulted in a 160-page report highly critical of the lab. Recent DNA tests, the so-called gold standard of the forensic science, must be redone. There will be a change in leadership of the lab.
Or so I am told by a source with ties to the lab.
I do not know whether the reports are true, but if you are a criminal defense lawyer practicing in Connecticut and you are facing...
August 8, 2011
I wanted to fall in love with James Stewart’s Tangled Webs, (Penguin Press, New York: 2011). The subtitle alone persuaded me the author was on to something important: "How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff." But my love was not to be. I read my way to the very last page, more out of a sense of professional obligation than due to any sense that I was about to discover something new and important.
I did not.
But I did learn more than I ever thought I wanted to know about the nuts and bolts of the Martha Stewart prosecution and...
August 7, 2011
My client was sentenced to 45 years in prison yesterday. As sentences for the crime of murder go, it was lenient. After trial, most defendants are slapped with 50 or 60 years. The result troubled one of the jurors in the case. The juror will never have the chance to speak her conscience in a form that matters to my client.
He was charged with the point-blank shooting of another young man in the early hours one morning after Halloween. An eyewitness said she saw the two men arguing, and my client then walked over to a car, put on a mask and a glove, and returned with a pistol. He fired...
August 6, 2011
Welcome: I'm the "deep and progressive thinker" you linked to. I also have a pony tail. And, what's worst of all, I think Rakofsky's claims are pretty interesting. But then again, I turned my card in to the guildmasters on the blawgosphere long ago.
Joseph Rakofsky made a little money this week, accepting $5,000 from the University of St. Thomas Law School and Deborah Hackerson as settlement of a claim he brought against them for defamation. Some 70-plus defendants remain in the suit, referred to by some, including me, as Rakofsky v. The Internet, with most defendants apparently...
August 6, 2011
August 2, 2011
We were supposed to forget about our sorrows at the sight of Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, on the house floor, preparing to cast her vote, one of...
July 31, 2011
It has been open season on Joshua Komisarjevsky since the day he was arrested in July 2007, and for good reason: There is little doubt that he...
July 29, 2011
He sat across the courtroom from me, next to a phalanx of new lawyers. I was on the witness stand, answering questions about a case I had handled...
July 28, 2011
Each year, as predictable as the change of seasons, a few clients charged with crimes fire me: they believe I am doing nothing for them. They are...
July 27, 2011
When you lose a job and fall behind on your mortgage payment you get a foreclosure notice. It might not matter that the bank seeking to take your...