The criminal justice system stumbles along on the road mumbling lip service to complete transparency, but we still lie to jurors. When jurors find out about these lies, they are often unhappy. A potential jury in Montana took matters in its own hands the other day, revolting during jury selection in a routine drug case. The spared a man a felony conviction and focused a judge to consider what justice requires. This was an example of the good that jury nullification can do: It can force prosecutors to rethink their private conceptions of justice. Nullification can empower the...
December 24, 2010
It is now official: Mickey Sherman will be heading to federal prison this spring. He was sentenced today by United States District Court Judge Janet Hall to a term of one year and one day. His crime was failing to pay his taxes in 2001 and 2002. I should feel either sympathy or satisfaction. Instead, it seems sadly predictable, as in the new Mickey Sherman reality show that will debut when he is released from prison. Expect a luxury edition of Prison Diaries of the Rich and Famous. Perhaps Sherman will co-star with Eliot Spitzer on the former New York governor's failing television...
December 22, 2010
When there is a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court, legal academics, interest groups, and journalists go into overdrive speculating about who the new nominee shall be. Great issues of the day are rehearsed, and judicial doctrine is transformed into the club of interest groups. The high court, we are led to believe, is a place of great intellectual drama.
Why then is nary a peep heard when a state Supreme Court vacancy occurs? State Supreme Courts are the courts of last resort for most litigants. Why aren’t these nominations transformed into ideological...
December 22, 2010
No one wants children exposed to men and women who might do them harm. This instinct to protect the innocent is at the very core of the sex offender registration laws. But when those laws fail to draw elementrary distinctions between strangers who pose danger and those caught unawares in the law's libidinal traps, there is something wrong. Sex offender registries should not become virtual prisons that deprive increasingly broader segments of our society of life's basics.
Senator Charles Schumer of New York has prosposed sweeping new legislation that would make it virtually impossible...
December 20, 2010
December 18, 2010
Experienced criminal defense lawyers and even judges know a simple truth: Ask the wrong questions, and the truth will slip through your fingers....
December 16, 2010
If I were a betting man, I'd wager a few dollars, but not the mortgage money, on the possibility of indictments arising from federal probe of the...
December 16, 2010
Immigration-speak is a language I have yet to learn. It sounds strange. It doesn’t quite fit the world in which my clients and I live. When I...
December 16, 2010
The man was not happy to be placed on a suicide watch, and he blamed me for it. I was responsible for the call. I made it. His situation was dire,...
December 15, 2010
Remind me not to move to Bedford, New Hampshire. Parents in town want the right to rate and approve all of the books that are taught in their...
December 14, 2010
Much though I applaud the reasoning supporting U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson’s decision to declare parts of the new health care law...