Dying scares me less than suffering. Perhaps that’s because I’ve reached an age at which I attend more funerals than weddings. But I can imagine nothing more terrifying than to be forced to suffer. So my heart goes out to Cassandra C., the young 17-year-old kidnapped by the state and forced, against her will, to undergo chemotherapy.
Yes, I said kidnapped.
The word was chosen with care, and is calculated to rankle Joette Katz and her colleagues at the Department of Children and Families. The law may be on the department’s side as to Cassandra, but so much the...
January 24, 2015
Jesus wept at the gravesite of Lazarus, the Gospel of John reports. Theologians debate the meaning of those tears. Some take it as source of sorrow over the tyranny of death, a master over us all. Others see it as his frustration over the blindness of those who failed to recognize his divine mission and power as son of God.
Whatever the source of these tears, the gospel reports Lazarus walked out of the tomb. Jesus had worked a miracle, bringing the dead back to life.
A depiction of Mohammed’s tears appears to promise nothing but more death. This week’s cover of the...
January 14, 2015
I've never really thought of Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, as a prophet. The former general, politician and university president seemed more of a technocrat, a dry-as-dust sort of fellow fit for the 1950s, but not much more. He was Ozzie and Harriet's president; not mine.
Shane Harris has me reassessing my view. His book "@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex," also inspired me to re-read Eisenhower's farewell address from 1961, the speech which made famous the notion of a "military-industrial complex."
Eisenhower warned that the tools we...
January 11, 2015
The gods smiled on our clients in 2014, and for that reason alone, I will count the past year a success: On behalf of all five of the lawyers at the Pattis Law Firm, LLC, Happy New Year.
We represent people accused of serious crimes; we also represent folks in life-changing civil conflicts. We argue in state and federal appellate courts, try cases to courts and juries, and, as is the lot of criminal defense lawyers everywhere, engage in endless rounds of plea-bargaining. We’re not public defenders, we are a private firm, and we’re dedicated to high-quality representation at...
January 2, 2015
December 31, 2014
Criminal trials often demonstrate a truth the novelist George Eliot knew: “People are almost always better than their neighbors think they...
December 31, 2014
The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner offer a chance to reconsider the law on police use of deadly force. Under current Fourth Amendment law,...
December 24, 2014
German and British troops laid down their arms on Christmas Eve, 1914, in the bloody fields of the Western front during World War I. Ordered to...
December 24, 2014
Ferguson, Mo., state's attorney Robert McCulloch admits he presented evidence he knew to be false to the grand jury considering whether to charge...
December 23, 2014
I suspect before too long the list of police officers killed by those outraged over the deaths of Eric Garner and...
December 17, 2014
Ten years ago, it seemed like a good idea to pack up and leave New Haven. So I did, starting my own law firm and moving my office out to Bethany. I...