One measure of our humanity is how we treat the least among us. The future will judge us harshly, I am afraid. This is especially so regarding our prisons. We’ve taken a punitive turn in social philosophy, and have created penal colonies in our midst. What’s worse, we’ve fallen in love with these islands of hatred.
“How can you represent those people” I am sometimes asked.
Why this one is accused of murder; that one has been accused of selling narcotics; this one sexually abused a client; that one stole money or forged a document in connection with a...
April 27, 2014
The process, criminal defense lawyers like to say, is the punishment. Nowhere is this so true as in the low-level criminal courts in Connecticut, known among the cognoscenti as the “GAs,” or Geographical Areas. All criminal cases make their courtside debut in the GA courts. Only the most serious are transferred to what some folks refer to, with a sense of drama, as “high court;” lawyers know these courts simply as JDs, short for Judicial Districts.
Connecticut is divided into 13 Judicial Districts and 20 Geographical Areas. Despite that, New Haven’s GA...
April 20, 2014
Anarchism is given a bad rap by folks who rarely take the trouble to understand what they are criticizing. Alexander Berkman's classic text on anarchism, The ABC of Anarchism, is a good place to start in educating the ignoratti.
Originally published in 1927 by the Vanguard Press, the volume is written to working men and women as a means of explaining to them the promise of a world without government. It is filled with powerful insight. For example, "[g]overnment remains strong because people think authority and political compulsion necessary." Of course, Berkman is right. The history of...
April 14, 2014
April 16, 2024 – Connecticut lost a town last night, but it did not lose either territory or population. Two suburban entities simply merged into a new, larger, town: New Hamden.
“The move was inevitable, really,” said New Hamden’s first mayor, Jane Appleby. “Consolidation of services will make delivery of all social services more cost effective.”
New Hamden is the merger of two former Connecticut towns, Hamden and Bethany. It was a move foreseen a decade ago when Bethany, formerly a semi-rural enclave midway...
April 12, 2014
April 11, 2014
I was in the chambers of a judge I respect a great deal trying to reach a plea bargain in a complex case the other day. Well before trial, he made...
April 10, 2014
The lawyer was at the very least honest, even if the words he spoke were chilling.
“Does the Internal Revenue Service take the position...
April 5, 2014
I was startled to learn that manipulation of federal "no-fly" lists takes place simply as a means of recruiting potential informants: Young Moslem...
April 2, 2014
Delaware Judge Jan Jurden just helped to destroy the market in human souls, and for that, I am grateful. She refused to send a self-confessed child...
March 31, 2014
A friend asked me to write something to present to new members of the bar in Alabama this week. Here it is:
You are about to embark on a career...
March 30, 2014
A reader wrote the other day to ask whether I ever get upset with a client for lying to me. What would I do, she inquired, if a client told me he was...