“How did you feel when you got your summons in the mail asking you to come to court?”
More often than not, it is the first question I ask potential jurors during jury selection. Most folks sigh, and then state that they weren’t happy. Jury service is regarded as an inconvenience, a bother, and, in some cases, a hardship.
The other day, I responded to a summons directed to me. I appeared in New Haven, reported to the ninth floor of the courthouse, and tried to blend in with the crowd.
“You look familiar,” a woman said, as we rode the elevator....
October 7, 2015
As of Oct. 5, 754 people, or almost three people per day, were shot to death by police officers in the United States in 2015. This information was not compiled by a law enforcement agency, although it easily could have been. Instead, The Washington Post has been gathering the data and posting it daily on its website. You can find the tally by googling "Washington Post police shootings."
Despite its penchant for collecting data on crime, the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to gather information of this sort or, in the alternative, if it has gathered such information, it has...
October 7, 2015
Dr. Lishan Wang doesn’t want to be forced to take medication. His mind is clear. He is prepared to represent himself at trial against the charge of murder. He wrote all this and more in a recent letter to the New Haven Register. He complains that the folks at the Whiting Forensic Institute in Middletown, where he is being held, are abusing him.
The good doctor was arrested on April 26, 2010, on charges he murdered a colleague, Dr. Vajinder Toor, in Branford that very day. He’s fought for, and won, the right to represent himself in the criminal court. And he’s littered...
October 5, 2015
There’s a rough divide among criminal defense lawyers, distinguishing those who defend so-called white-collar cases from those who defend other crimes, such as murder, rape, robbery and child abuse. White collar cases, taking their name from the pressed and starched shirts of the power suite elite who are accused of committing them, are typically financial in nature.
Lawyers walking on the wild side accuse their white collar colleagues of living in a fantasy world, a world without real consequences, where people can buy their way out of trouble with the law.
Oh, there are...
September 23, 2015
September 16, 2015
You’ve heard the syllogism:
“All men are mortal;
“Socrates is a man;
“Therefore Socrates is...
September 14, 2015
Yale is concerned that students facing sexual misconduct charges might not fully understand the manner in which such complaints are...
September 12, 2015
Here’s a shout out to the students in Introduction to Criminal Justice, CJUS 1111, Western New Mexico University. Andy Warren, the...
September 11, 2015
I am sure that in the rarefied atmosphere federal judges call home, gargantuan restitution orders look fair, just and reasonable. After all, what...
September 9, 2015
Those of you of a certain age will well recall being admonished to eat your vegetables, to clean your dinner plate, by being told of the starving...
September 3, 2015
During the past 30 days, an average of three people were shot to death by police officers each day in the United States. It was a particularly bloody...