Many years ago, I was invited to give a talk to lawyers. The organizers of the conference called my presentation: “Trying cases outside the box.” I thought the title an odd one. What box? A trial is simple story telling, right? This was before a near professionally fatal flirtation with being reasonable and trying to get along seized me. I now realize the boxes are but coffins.
I fear the herd, especially those herds composed of groups who mean well. Give me the solitary voice any day of the week. Now there is a friend.
So I took to the...
September 28, 2011
What New England state incarcerates its citizens at a rate comparable to the deep South? Is it Maine, with its rural sensibilities? Rock-ribbed New Hampshire? Or how about Massachusetts, home of Boston, a large, festering city? Surely it could not be bucolic Vermont? Or Connecticut, land of the civilized, and, presumably free?
I’ve got news for you. Connecticut ranks eleven among the states in terms of prison population. We’re right up there with Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, to name a few. Connecticut’s incarceration rate is...
September 26, 2011
Troy Davis is dead. Joan-MacPhail-Harris is happy. And the American criminal justice system is sick. Who do we think we are kidding when we call ourselves the land of the free?
Let me put my cards out on the table straightaway. I am with Thomas Hobbes when it comes to the death penalty. When the state seeks to kill, there is a right to resist, even to revolt. Even Hobbes, whose seventeenth century work Leviathan is still read as a classic statement of absolute state power, recognized that the state’s power has limits. When it seeks to kill its citizens, all bets are off: the...
September 22, 2011
Confession is good for the soul, we like to say. Police prey upon this instinct, and, when alone with men and women suspected of crimes, police officers rely upon it. “Get if off your chest,” they say. “It will do you good.” They sit and play at priest, social worker and concerned friend.
Then they turn around and use your words to try to kill you.
No matter how good confession may be for the soul, it wreaks havoc on your bodily prospects. Never forget for a moment that police officers don’t care a whit for your soul. What they want is your body...
September 22, 2011
September 20, 2011
Good cross-examiners know that what is unsaid is sometimes more important than the testimony. A question can frame all that follows. Listen to the...
September 17, 2011
Second verse, same as the first: That will be the theme of the State’s methodical and workman-like presentation in the case of State v....
September 15, 2011
The good folks at Barnes and Noble in North Haven, Connecticut, are sponsoring a book signing for my new book Taking Back the Courts. I will be there...
September 15, 2011
I’ve never faced the prospect of going to prison. I’ve not sat with a lawyer and been offered a plea deal: Either take the five years the...
September 13, 2011
A pre-dawn telephone call usually means one thing: federal agents have just come storm-trooping through someone’s home, making an arrest before...
September 12, 2011
We’ve survived the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The media reports no shocking new acts of terror. We’ve waved flags, declared both the...