New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie could very well find himself a defendant in a criminal prosecution as federal prosecutors investigate his administration's closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge, spanning the Hudson River, between Fort Lee, N.J., and Manhattan. While he has been quick to distance himself from the gathering storm, there's a very real chance a federal grand jury will be taking a good, long look at him. Here's why.
Christie is New Jersey's top politico, a man with eyes on the Republican nomination for president in 2016. In the language of the law, he is a "state...
January 12, 2014
I called one of the law’s great septuagenarians just after the new year to commiserate about the passing of New Haven attorney William Gallagher.
“I didn’t see this coming,” he said, noting that Gallagher, like him, was in his 70s.
Death is unnerving that way. We know that it comes for us all, but we avoid facing it. Yes, all men are mortal, but what has that to do with us? We, the living, watch others come and go; is not the watching eye eternal?
“Yeah, it makes me think,” I responded, thinking of the hollow spot in...
January 11, 2014
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
December 25, 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...
December 22, 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...
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...