If ever anyone knew how potent a jury’s power to alter a life’s course, it was Aaron Hernandez. He killed himself days after being acquitted of a double murder in Boston. But he had little cause to celebrate the victory. He was sentenced to life behind bars for another murder, the result of another jury’s convicting him.
I suspect the contrast was more than he could bear.
Professional athletes live on life’s high wire. They know that reputations are made and lost in an instant. Snag a game-winning pass in overtime in a...
April 19, 2017
Supreme Court confirmation hearings increasingly look like trysts between horny customers posing as suitors and a pre-paid prostitute. We ought to dispense with these hearings, or, at the very least, be honest about the process.
So it is no surprise to learn next to nothing about President Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia. Neil Gorsuch sat for some ten hours of questioning yesterday. It was an act of profound intellectus interruptus.
There’s no doubting Gorsuch can do the job. Indeed, the Constitution...
March 22, 2017
Hey, brother, can you spare a Bitcoin? We may not yet be at a point where panhandlers request cryptocurrency, but increasingly, Bitcoin and other alternative currencies,[1] are on the mind of regulators, investors, and merchants. Lawyers are free to accept Bitcoin as payment for legal fees, and some, including the author, do. But this shadowy world of electronic currency raises important questions about transparency, legitimacy of existing institutions, and, alas, money laundering.
Most lawyers aren’t paying attention to Bitcoin. It is a wave breaking all...
March 20, 2017
I can’t say I am surprised by Dylann Roof’s decision to conduct his own defense. What, really, has he to lose?
Mr. Roof is standing trial in a South Carolina federal court, accused of 33 crimes — ranging from murder to obstruction of religion to firearms charges and to hate crimes — all arising from his shooting spree in a Charleston African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015. Mr. Roof, 22, is white; the nine people he shot to death were black. He hoped his shootings would start a race war.
If convicted, after a trial by jury, he faces the death...
December 9, 2016
December 7, 2016
Just why anyone would want to be a police officer in this day and age is beyond me. And why any current officer would want to lead a...
November 23, 2016
By the time you read this, you will most likely have done all the shopping and planning you need to do to celebrate Thanksgiving. Comes now the...
November 18, 2016
Here’s the good news: President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Steve Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor might...
November 10, 2016
The website for information on how to migrate to Canada crashed Tuesday night; it was apparently overwhelmed by the amount of traffic. I suspect that...
October 27, 2016
Baseball and I have a tortured history. I found something like redemption and hope in the game as a child. Then time eroded the childlike perception...
October 23, 2016
Trial lawyers know a thing or two about the art of persuasion. We make our living, after all, pitching stories to strangers. In that regard, we...