Had attorney Jeremiah Donovan waited a week or two, his violation of a court order would never have been necessary: Joshua Komisarjevsky's diaries told us all we needed to know about his sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl in Cheshire. He didn't actually rape her, he reasons; he spared her that indignity. Instead, he merely ejaculated onto her. Welcome to Hell where such distinctions matter.
Donovan will face a show cause hearing before Superior Court Judge Roland Fasano today. The judge will have to determine what to do about the fact that Donovan wasn't supposed to comment publicly...
October 26, 2010
The Choate Rosemary Hall school in Wallingford, Connecticut, is one of the nation's premiere prep schools. Kids go there with hopes of a bright future. Most are boarders, but many are day students. All live in a privileged bubble. But they are still kids, and kids do stupid things. So, frankly, do adults. We tolerate vast amounts of stupidity and petty behavior in our society. We've not yet criminalized being boorish, petty and vain. But Choate is different. It wants to remake human nature.
Just ask the two young women recently expelled from Choate for cyberbullying. It seems they...
October 24, 2010
I wish I knew why motorists stopped to gawk at every bit of roadside carnage. We are drawn almost against our will to stare at the sorrow of others. I suspect the same impulse is at work in the trial of Steven Hayes. We cannot get enough of the horror of it all. It's a slasher film made real. Reporters line up hours before court opens to get a seat. "More," we demand, even as we decry the crimes as intolerable. We're twisted all right.
So is Joshua Komisarjevsky.
When Hayes's lawyers unveiled the prison diaries of Komisarjesky in an effort to save their client's life, they did us...
October 24, 2010
The penalty phase of the prosecution of Steven Hayes has been nothing short of bizarre. The best defense thus far seems to be a twisted variant of "the devil made me do it." When the defense introduced the prison diaries of co-defendant Joshua Komisarjevsky as mitigating evidence, jaws dropped: Just how does Komisarjevsky's confession make Hayes look good? There is a danger that jurors will attribute the same sense of twisted glory Komisarjevsky boasted about to Hayes. There's only one way to set the record straight now about who Hayes is and why he engaged in the slaughter at the Petit home...
October 23, 2010
October 21, 2010
There was a short, but significant, drama in a Hartford, Connecticut, courtroom earlier this week. It lasted all of 25 minutes. It was a trial in...
October 21, 2010
Death, we like to say in the law, is different. Hence, the evolution of differing standards for capital cases. But the application of these standards...
October 20, 2010
"The testimony in this case reveals a crime of singular atrocity. It is, in a sense, inexplicable; but it is not thereby rendered less inhuman or...
October 18, 2010
The Biblical story of Job can be read on several levels. On the one hand, Job is the faithful servant of a powerful God, never failing in his faith,...
October 17, 2010
Evidence begins tomorrow in the penalty phase of State v. Hayes in Connecticut. The state seeks the death penalty. Mr. Hayes has already been...
October 17, 2010
The first volume of Mark Twain's much-anticipated autobiography arrived the other day. At 700-plus pages, there is a telephone directory-like feel to...