Who killed EugenioVega DeLeon? He was shot dead in his store on Grand Avenue in New Haven on July 4, 1993. One eyewitness claimed to have seen two men leave the store right after the shooting. She testified at a trial in 1995. Then she recanted her testimony at another trial in 2009. She then pleaded the Fifth Amendment rather than testify at a third trial in 2012. Recently, after being granted immunity by the state, she once again testified that she did not know who shot Mr. DeLeon, and that she did not see the two men at all.
So why is George Gould sitting in prison? And why is...
October 17, 2013
Should juries know about plea bargains rejected by those accused of crimes? We currently shield jurors from such knowledge. In most jurisdictions, jurors don’t even have a role in determining the sentence to be imposed if they find a person guilty. That’s the judge’s job, we say. This scrambled process yields something less than justice, and something far less than accountability, it yields an unregulated market in human souls.
Plea bargaining is the dark art of the criminal law. It takes place in secret. In the state system, there are private meetings between...
October 4, 2013
We call trials a search for the truth, but the fact remains that what juries see at trial is often only the tip of the iceberg. Just beneath the surface, a massive and sometimes ugly reality supports the public display of testimony presented in open court. This is especially so in criminal cases, where something less than the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is not just tolerated, but expected, even condoned.
The law not only tolerates this, the law encourages deception, by granting privileges, immunities and secrecy to the very government we naively believe to operate in the...
September 25, 2013
Against my better judgment, I’ve once again wandered into the family courts in yet another post-judgment war about who gets to raise a broken couple’s children. Once again, I am dumbstruck as I watch experts opine about what is in the best interest of the children. The sheer wastefulness of it all is breath-taking.
My client has custody of his three small children. His ex-wife, who absented herself from the children’s lives, and from the state, has re-emerged, a new husband in tow, and now wants greater access to be a more active mom. She strikes me as...
September 20, 2013
September 19, 2013
First a note of warning: This is a column that will make you happy never to have attended law school, and it might very well make your head hurt, an...
September 12, 2013
Reason is, and always has been, and shall forever remain, the slave of the passions. And no passion inflames the heart quite like sympathy. We love...
September 6, 2013
I don’t recall how many years ago it was that I pulled the plug on my participation on the federal Criminal Justice Act panel, but I do recall...
September 5, 2013
There must be few things more embarrassing than a policeman’s knock on the door during a domestic dispute. It’s bad enough that...
August 28, 2013
We’re awash in lawyers. There are roughly 40 of them for every 10,000 people in the United States. Connecticut ranks third among the states...
August 28, 2013
POSTED: 08/28/13, 6:09 PM EDT |
We’re awash in lawyers. There are roughly 40 of them for every 10,000 people...