I was in New Haven just as day broke. Much to my surprise, there were few media wagons in front of the courthouse on Church Street. Only one ghastly looking antenna reached into the gray morning sky. All at once it struck me: death is now passe.
It was opening day of jury selection in the case of State v. Komisarjevsky, the co-defendant in the brutal home invasion in Cheshire in 2007. When Stephen Hayes was tried last year, it was standing room only in the courthouse lobby when jury selection began. There was a grim sort of determination by the media to cover the case from...
March 16, 2011
"There is no such thing as justice – in or out of court." The words are Clarence Darrow’s. The same Clarence Darrow who once said:"Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom. Justice is what comes out of a courtroom."
These are decidedly antinomian sentiments, warranting the H.G. Well’s description of Darrow as a "sentimental anarchist." Taken to their extreme, they suggest that Darrow, lawyer, essayist, orator and social philosopher, was not above suggesting that the ends justified the means. If there is no justice in court, and justice is...
March 16, 2011
One could be forgiven for believing that the walls wept in the West Hartford, Connecticut, home of former endocrinologist Dr. George Reardon. The reason for those tears will soon be on public display in a lawsuit filed by one of the nearly 150 plaintiffs against the St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center and Saint Francis Care, Inc., in Hartford. The tears belong to children abused by a doctor the community, and the hospital, trusted. Evidence begins in on April 5 in Waterbury.
Dr. Reardon, a bachelor, died in 1998. He was the chief of endocrinology at the Hartford hospital from 1963 to...
March 15, 2011
Another lost weekend is behind me. It was spent fussing over a manuscript, reading the same words for the umpteenth time, trying to force the garbage out of my prose, and hoping to catch errors before they see the light of day in the form of a book. It strikes me now, and with fury, that there is a difference between blogging and writing.
I’ve been a mad scribbler for many years, My first job after college and graduate school was as an editorial writer. For five years, I wrote opinions that appeared under the masthead of a couple of newspapers. I left newspapers because I did...
March 14, 2011
March 12, 2011
Call someone a victim, and they are at once framed in a sympathetic light. Bad things happen to victims, we are drawn to them, wanting to help them...
March 11, 2011
Everyone plea bargains in the criminal courts; sometimes the bargaining resolves a case. It is part of the process. But not all parties approach the...
March 10, 2011
I understand that times are hard for lawyers statewide. Receipts are down, the public defender’s offices of the state are swamped, and judges...
March 7, 2011
"It would be a disgrace to us if amongst us men should burn a rattlesnake or a mad dog. The badness of the victim is not an element in the case at...
March 7, 2011
If you cannot imagine enjoying, of even finding wise counsel, in a book recommending a return to something like polytheism, you are not alone. I have...
March 6, 2011
The law is, and always shall be, a late-comer to any crisis. By the time legal doctrines and rules evolve, take shape and respond to a crisis, the...