Blog Posts

"With this historic vote, the Senate has affirmed that Judge Sotomayor has the intellect, the temperament, the history, the integrity and the independence of mind to ably serve on our nation's highest court," President Barack Obama said yesterday. And the president is right.
When she is sworn...

I doubt there is a person of goodwill in the state who does not empathize with Dr. William Petit of Cheshire. The man’s family was slaughtered, and he was beaten and left for dead. To look at the family photo of he, his wife and two daughters displayed in news magazines nationwide is to...

The nomination and now near-certain confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor as a justice of the United States Supreme Court stunned me. I am disconnected from the great personages and events of history. I'm a backwater kind of guy, representing folks who rarely make life's larger radar. But I have appeared...

Is Madeline Neumann dead today because her parents did not take her to a doctor? Or is she dead because God did not answer her parents' prayers to heal her? The answer is both. But why are only the parents facing prison?
The problem of evil is one theologians just can't lick. Justifying the...

I am sucking wind just now, searching for inspiration. My wife and I took a lot of time off this summer, and now we are back. After about six weeks off during the past ten weeks, I am looking down the long barrel of a tough trial schedule stretching well into 2010. My clients are scared, and...

So just how crazy do you have to be to forfeit the right to represent yourself at trial?
Consider the case of State v. Connor, just published last month. Mr. Connor was suffering, at a minimum, from an achy-breaky heart and had unresolved issues with his ex-wife. So he did the only thing...

If I were to tell you that I’ve engaged in soul-searching for the past few months, would you scoff? What! A trial lawyer with a soul? And me, of all people, a scrivener with a poison pen? What provoked this?
The prospect of a judgeship was dangled before my eyes. I was in New York when...

I've taken a good part of the Summer off this year. No blogging. Little news reading. But I'm back in the saddle now, and saddled with the sad, sad spectacle of Gates v. Crowley. How this garden variety dispute became transformed into national news is beyond me.
First, some fundamentals:...

Hugh Keefe has a gift for superlatives. As one of the deans of Connecticut’s defense bar, he has earned the right to make pronouncements as he tap dances through his twilight years. He may not yet have made the cover of Super Lawyers magazine, but he grabs as many front pages of the daily...

I’ve been on Cape Cod for the past few weeks, spending time with my wife, kids and dogs. Life is good. Yet death keeps intervening, both in the form of its stark finality and as a lurking presence. Somehow the gods have got it all wrong. The wrong people have been torn from our grasp; one...