I am not sure there are any larger lessons to learn from the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Mental illness isn’t the answer: Millions of Americans suffer from such maladies, few become shooters. The over-abundance of firearms isn’t the the answer: By that standard, we’d all be dead several times over, given the ubiquity of weapons in our gun-crazed culture. And reference to evil doesn’t do the trick; it’s a labeling exercise, adding nothing but a sense of closure to our understanding of the world.
...
December 15, 2013
Only once have I had to take the witness stand to plead the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
I was seeking permission to withdraw from representation of a man on death row. My former partner and I were handling his appeal, trying to keep the state from killing him. When a conflict arose between my interests and the interests of the client, I asked the court for permission to stop representing him. The state thought it a ruse, another delay tactic to prevent justice’s needle from reaching the vein of the condemned.
I knew better. I knew that I had erred...
December 12, 2013
Former Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim was convicted by a federal jury and served seven years in prison for his role in a racketeering conspiracy that extorted some $800,000 from contractors seeking to do business in the Park City. That verdict was returned in 2003. He’s done his time. Now he wants his law license back. One obstacle standing in his way is his refusal to express remorse.
Someone tell me this is a sick joke.
Ganim’s reinstatement campaign took him to the State’s Supreme Court last week, where his counsel faced questions about whether Ganim was...
December 4, 2013
It's Thanksgiving week as I write this, and who wants to work? Better to pull some anecdotes from memory, and entertain.
------
"Mr. Pattis, are you all right?" The judge looked concerned. She was sitting no more than six feet from me. I thought I was fine, actually. After all, I was cross-examining a witness, the thing I most enjoy about being a lawyer. The witness was warm butter to my knife. I looked up.
"Are you all right?" My hand was on my chest, beneath my suit jacket. She was assuming I was suffering chest pain.
"If I had a heart, a fact not in evidence," I...
November 29, 2013
November 27, 2013
It was perhaps fitting that on the day the Danbury state’s attorney released his report on last year’s shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary...
November 21, 2013
Anyone married for more than a few years has an intuitive grasp of the cognitive process known as framing: Once someone has decided to view you in a...
November 18, 2013
News that the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of a former client of mine was a delightful surprise. He was convicted of sexually abusing a...
November 17, 2013
"The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."
Oh, that it were true, that there were a shepherd to stand beside me in the well of this court,...
November 14, 2013
How many innocent men and women are sitting in prison? No one knows, exactly, and few care. A person who’s been found guilty by a jury had...
November 7, 2013
It’s been awhile since I’ve written about my dogs, Odysseus and Penelope, but I swear they have been giving me tutorials in the law,...