Blog Posts

It is difficult to fathom why federal prosecutors waited four years to bring charges against Douglass Mackey, a.k.a. Ricky Vaughn, and it is inconceivable that they did so by dispensing with the requirements of a grand jury. The only explanation is that this is a political prosecution....

It will take work to assure that Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Keung and Thomas Lane receive fair trials. The four Minneapolis police officers are accused of crimes in the death of George Floyd. It will be a rare juror who has not formed an opinion of some sort before the...

There is a special place in Hell for those who cheer sending a person to prison, so mark today as a special day for the keepers of the roll in the underworld. The chorus of those cheered by the guilty verdicts against Bill Cosby deafens.
"Guilty," the jury said, three times...

I couldn’t stop thinking about the allegory of the metals in Plato’s Republic as I read the op-ed piece in The Washington Post written by Los Angeles Police Officer, Sunil Dutta. He was writing to express a police officer’s point of view in the wake of the shooting of Michael...

I tried, I really did, to write about something other than Hurricane Sandy, the Frankenstorm, the Storm of the Century, that was to drive us to our knees. But after this near miss with yet another apocalypse, I could think of little else. The end was nigh, and we’re still here. Isn’t...

Good grief. Was James Bond the inspiration behind the latest escapade in the Danbury State’s Attorney’s office? Or was it just lust gone awry in the form of a foot fetish? Whatever the cause, Connecticut’s premiere venue for the prosecution of sex crimes is now reeling in the wake...

The federal government might have James “Whitey” Bulger, 81, in custody, but Bulger, an alleged former crime boss accused of racketeering and involvement in 19 murders, has the FBI right were he has always had it: by the short hairs. It remains to be seen whether the feds will come...

I took a younger partner in a while back. He is a brilliant lawyer; a raw talent that requires only time and effort to be burnished into a gem. I took him in and did my best to nourish him. But last week, we parted ways. There's a lesson in that, I suppose. I will learn it when the sorrow...

Consider the following fact pattern, as a jury did this week: A man shoots a woman through the head during an argument in the kitchen of his own home. As he shoots her, his girlfriend, the mother of his his three children, jumps onto his back. He shoots a third woman in he chest. She runs from the...

From United States v. Reeves, decided last week by the Second Circuit:

"This appeal requires us to consider the validity of a condition of supervised release [following a prison term for possessing child pornography] that obligated Reeves, upon entry into a “significant romantic...