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.
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"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
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 School in Newtown, New Haven was under siege. It’s a sign of the times, isn’t it? Random acts of violence, amorphous terror and, always, armed men on the move, peering around corners, banging on doors, rushing grimly through the streets?
Welcome to the 21st century.
I was in Bridgeport the day the report came out. My phone erupted with calls from friends in New Haven. There were helicopters in the sky, police everywhere,...
November 27, 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 certain light, the facts just get in the way. Come home late to an angry spouse, and there is little you can say in your own defense, even if it is the truth. It is not that your spouse is being unfair, it is that the assumptions are powerful, they can cast a light on events, determining what is seen, and what is ignored.
I was framed the other day in trial by a judge. The result shocked me. It has me rethinking whether we ought to have...
November 21, 2013
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,...
November 6, 2013
St. Augustine reports the following conversation between Alexander the Great, who struggled to drive pirates from the Mediterranean Sea, and a...
November 1, 2013
Expert testimony, we are taught, is intended to assist juries in deciding difficult factual issues. We permit the opinion testimony of folks who...