Remember “Miller’s Boys,” the gang of corrupt racist cops whom the feds prosecuted, calling them bullies with badges for their treatment of illegal immigrants in East Haven? Well, Sergeant David Miller, the presumed leader of the pack, was in federal court today (Wednesday) for sentencing, and there was the same government that called him a racist begging the sentencing judge for leniency.
The government is a one-eyed pig, fouling its own pen whensoever it oinks.
This prosecution was supposed to demonstrate to the world the government’s commitment to equal...
February 14, 2014
Massachusetts Judge Joseph Johnson has imposed a gag order on the parents of Justina Pelletier, preventing them from raising public questions about why their daughter remains in custody in the Bay State. It is not at all clear to me why the parents have not contested this gag order. Perhaps they hope that by obeying the judge's order, Massachusetts might give them their daughter back.
One year ago, the West Hartford couple took their then 14-year-old daughter to the Boston Children's Hospital, where she was admitted. In 2011, Justina was diagnosed by doctors at the Tufts Medical Center...
February 5, 2014
It seems to shock friends when I tell them that it matters not at all to me whether a client has committed the very crime the state alleges. Even clients are wary. Some clients seem to suspect that if they tell you the truth, you won't defend them with all the might you can muster.
But it's true, and therein lies the rub: Although judgments in criminal cases are cast in moral terms - a defendant is guilty or not guilty of the crime charged - the law is not about morals. It is a far more mundane affair. The criminal law would be a far better thing if it shed the language of morals; we've...
January 15, 2014
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could very well find himself a defendant in a criminal prosecution as federal prosecutors investigate his administration's closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge, spanning the Hudson River, between Fort Lee, N.J., and Manhattan. While he has been quick to distance himself from the gathering storm, there's a very real chance a federal grand jury will be taking a good, long look at him. Here's why.
Christie is New Jersey's top politico, a man with eyes on the Republican nomination for president in 2016. In the language of the law, he is a "state...
January 12, 2014
January 11, 2014
I called one of the law’s great septuagenarians just after the new year to commiserate about the passing of New Haven attorney William...
January 2, 2014
I’ve never fully understood just why prostitution is a crime. Our courting and mating rituals as a species are complex. Prostitution...
December 28, 2013
The publicist describes Kiese Laymon as a "black 21st-century Mark Twain," a curious sort of notion I was eager to test, and now, having read the...
December 25, 2013
Ethan Couch caught a break the other day in Fort Worth, Texas. It didn’t outrage me at all. In a left-handed way, it almost made me...
December 22, 2013
NOTE: I WOULD NO LONGER GIVE THIS ADDRESS. RECENT EVENTS HAVE MADE BE WARY OF ISLAM. TERRORISM MAY NOT HAVE A RELIGION, BUT THERE ARE PLENTY OF...
December 21, 2013
Michael Connelly never practiced law a day in his life, but his fiction best approximates the gritty reality of the private practice of law. His...