The message in New Haven the other night was loud and clear: “We’re from the federal government, and we’re here to help.” It was all I could do to remain in the room. I tried to believe them. But an instinct of mistrust overcame the good will the FBI agent and federal prosecutor tried to generate.
I was the third panelist at the Stetson Library. The topic was “Color of Law” violations. Federal officials were there as part of an aggressive community outreach program, trying to alert the community to federal resources only a phone call away. I am not sure inviting me to...
August 25, 2011
Oh, to be white, wealthy and powerful. To inhabit, if only for a moment, the privileged bubble encasing Dominique Strauss-Kahn. I don’t know whether the geriatric sex machine got away with rape. But I do know this: The rich really do live differently than the rest of us.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office moved today to dismiss rape charges against the one-time director of the International Monetary Fund, a sometime presidential candidate in France, and poster child for the American Association of Retired Persons campaign on “Safe Sex for Seniors.” Were...
August 23, 2011
Only two people know what went down in a Manhattan hotel suite in May between the plutocrat and the impecunious maid: Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Nafissatou Diallo. Was there a rape? Consensual sex? Neither?
At its core, this is a garden-variety criminal case. A complaining witness, Ms. Diallo, called the police and cried "rape." She said a hotel patron forced herself on her. She claimed he forced her to have oral sex. Presumably, there is DNA evidence to support the claim that Strauss-Kahn ejaculated. Prosecutors call that corroboration. In the blinking of a prosecutorial eye, Ms....
August 21, 2011
I generally avoid writing about the so-called "blawgosphere" – the universe of bloggers who write about the law. There’s an inbred quality to such writing that destroys interest in the subject matter. It is said that those who can’t do teach. What of the cast of lawyers who write about what other lawyers are saying about what other lawyers do? Deliver me from the set of Deliverance, please.
But I was struck this week by a few posts at a site called Lawyers on Strike. The author was pseudonymous and disabused of the legal system – until this week. He has...
August 18, 2011
August 17, 2011
A juror sent me the following note today with permission to publish it. The note describes her reaction upon learning the sentence the court...
August 12, 2011
It’s been a long time since I could say I was looking forward to cross-examining a DNA expert from Connecticut’s forensic crime labs....
August 10, 2011
When the National Academy of Sciences reported several years ago on the sorry state of forensic sciences in the United States, Dr. Carll Ladd, DNA...
August 9, 2011
I watched videos of the recent rioting in London the other day, and two words sprang to mind: Joseph Schumpeter. And I wondered who, in North...
August 8, 2011
Unconfirmed reports suggest that the Connecticut Department of Public Safety forensic laboratory is at the eye of a storm. A federal review of the...
August 7, 2011
I wanted to fall in love with James Stewart’s Tangled Webs, (Penguin Press, New York: 2011). The subtitle alone persuaded me the author was on...