I’ve never fully understood just why prostitution is a crime. Our courting and mating rituals as a species are complex. Prostitution seems, well, a more direct and sometimes honest, if pathetic, route to certain primal satisfactions.
Yet prostitution cases are common, and most are, in fact, sad, involving haggard, drug-addicted women, and desperate men looking for cheap substitutes for love in all the wrong places. Most of the “pros” either start out strung out on drugs or alcohol, or end up that way; it is a punishing life, selling passion,...
January 2, 2014
The publicist describes Kiese Laymon as a "black 21st-century Mark Twain," a curious sort of notion I was eager to test, and now, having read the book, am just as eager to reject. Laymon isn't some reconstituted version of a white man. Did the person who wrote this description even bother to read the book? Or was he just looking to strut some stuff, even stupid stuff, for the sake of a sale?
Laymon has a voice all his own. He's just now starting to hit his stride. Where this voice takes him, and us, is a long way from certain. I can say this much with confidence: He has my...
December 28, 2013
Ethan Couch caught a break the other day in Fort Worth, Texas. It didn’t outrage me at all. In a left-handed way, it almost made me hopeful.
The 16-year-old was charged as a juvenile in a vehicular homicide that killed four people. He was drunk while driving a car. His blood alcohol was three times the legal limit for an adult.
Prosecutors in the case asked that Couch be sentenced to 20 years in prison. Instead of prison, he was sentenced to 10 years of probation, with his father paying for costly counseling.
What grabbed the headlines in this case...
December 25, 2013
NOTE: I WOULD NO LONGER GIVE THIS ADDRESS. RECENT EVENTS HAVE MADE BE WARY OF ISLAM. TERRORISM MAY NOT HAVE A RELIGION, BUT THERE ARE PLENTY OF TERRORISTS AMONG MEMBERS OF THIS FAITH. MY MESSAGE NOW WOULD BE: IF YOU WANT A WELCOME, POLICE YOUR OWN -- YOU HAVE LOST MY TRUST. NOVEMBER 14, 2015
Keynote address at the 9th annual Council on American-Islamic Relations Conference banquet:
I would like to thank MONGI DHAOUADI for inviting me to spend the evening with you. Of course, I was honored by the invitation. But I was also more than a little surprised. You see, I earn my living as...
December 22, 2013
December 21, 2013
Michael Connelly never practiced law a day in his life, but his fiction best approximates the gritty reality of the private practice of law. His...
December 19, 2013
Friends were surprised that I crossed the line to represent Jason Zullo, an East Haven cop accused of harassing Hispanics while on duty. And when he...
December 15, 2013
I am not sure there are any larger lessons to learn from the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December...
December 12, 2013
Only once have I had to take the witness stand to plead the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
I was seeking permission to...
December 4, 2013
Former Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim was convicted by a federal jury and served seven years in prison for his role in a racketeering conspiracy...
November 29, 2013
It's Thanksgiving week as I write this, and who wants to work? Better to pull some anecdotes from memory, and entertain.
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"Mr....