Perhaps you missed the piece in today's Washington Post by Sunil Dutta, a member of the Los Angeles Police Department, and junior college instructor. It is a whiny, self-righteous screed that will make him a hero around cop bars and police water coolers nationwide. His message? If you don't want to get hurt, just obey when he asks you to do something. Screw the Constitution. Kiss the man's baton and you'll be fine.
Here are excerpts.
"Working the street, I can’t even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my...
August 19, 2014
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Michael Brown’s blood is on the gavel of the federal judiciary. In the past couple of decades, the courts have made it all but impossible to hold police officers accountable before juries. Is it any wonder officers think they can kill with impunity?
We know how Michael Brown, 18, was killed in Ferguson, Missouri — a police officer shot him to death. What we don’t know is why the shooting occurred.
The law gives to police officers the right to use deadly force. But that right is not without limitation. All citizens, at...
August 17, 2014
"If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." I think about this line of Friedrich Nietszche's more often than I care to admit. The practice of law hasn't mellowed me; if anything, it's made me more cynical, perhaps too cynical. The sad fact is that I no longer believe the courts administer anything like justice.
So it was with a sense of relief, even kinship, that I started reading through the summer 2014 edition of Daedalus, the quarterly publication of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The issue bears a thematic title: The Invention of...
August 14, 2014
Every time I hear a judge talk about sending people to prison as a means of promoting public respect for the law, I want to stop the proceedings and holler: "Really? Just how does sending yet another soul to prison promote respect for anything, Judge?"
But I don't. I stand silently beside the defendant and listen as months and years of their life are whittled away in the name of justice. Rather than getting used to the public spectacle of sentencing, I get more militant: Prison is not a house of correction. Prison is a shrine to human failure.
So I stood the other day next to a...
August 13, 2014
August 9, 2014
From a distance, the case no doubt looked hopeless. Jonathan Gibbs had confessed to police, signing a statement under oath, telling officers he was...
August 8, 2014
Politico is not naming the member of the Washington, D.C., Police Department who announced that John Hinkley may face new charges because of the...
August 3, 2014
What would you call a self-confessed agnostic who recites Psalm 23 in times of grave trouble? Hypocrite comes to mind, and the...
August 3, 2014
One of the occupational hazards of the legal profession is a close acquaintance with chaos. The darkness leads some into the wasteland of depression,...
July 26, 2014
It seems as though all of my heroes are getting long in the tooth: Gerry Spence and F. Lee Bailey are in their 80s. Tony Serra is 79. Even John...
July 25, 2014
It surprises most people to learn that in the state courts of Connecticut, judges almost never permit opening statements in criminal cases. Lawyers...