Blog Posts

Enough, finally, is enough. Your right to bear arms does not yield the right to kill at random. Doesn’t last week’s killing spree at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown give you even a moment’s hesitation? Or are you still going to hide behind the facile quip that guns...

Even if you are in mourning about the results of the presidential election, and I am not, you will agree that there is one occasion for rejoicing: With the elections safely behind us, both President Obama and the Senate can now turn their attention to fully staffing the federal judiciary. The...

I did not get a chance to head out to Milford to watch any of the trial of Jason Anderson, the former Milford police officer involved in the high-speed collision that killed two teenagers. Frankly, I don’t like watching other lawyers try cases; it’s sort of like watching ice melt. When...

In the end, the choice of whether to take a criminal case to trial or to enter into a plea agreement with the government belongs to the client, and to the client alone. There are times in which a client rejects his lawyer’s advice, goes to trial, and is badly hurt. Then there are times in...

Oxcodone is the new "gateway drug," or so federal prosecutors are reporting in their sentencing memoranda. Take some oxy, and you’re on the slippery slope to serious drug addiction. And let’s not forget the violence associated with drug dealing of all sorts. So let’s slam oxy...

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office took a gentle swat at me the other day. It believes I came dangerously close to violating the rules of professional responsibility as to pre-trial publicity by speaking out to the press. The case involves a client accused of promoting prostitution as...

There really ought not to be two standards for what is fair, just and reasonable, one for the ordinary, run of the mill case, the other for cases in which the world is watching, struck dumb with pity. But lawyers for Charla Nash think otherwise. Ms. Nash is an entirely sympathetic figure. She is...

Here is a letter and email chain reflecting how a Kangaroo Court works. A tragedy in four parts:
ACT I: An Invitation to an Execution:
On Jun 15, 2012, at 4:23 PM, "W, Diane" <Diane.W@po.state.ct.us> wrote:
> Dear Attorney Pattis: > > Attached please find a copy of...

Call me an idealist, a dreamer, even a fool: I believe in the presumption of innocence. When a client stands presented to the world as a criminal, his reputation in tatters, his livelihood at risk, the presumption of innocence is all he has left. I wish the courts took it more seriously. I stood...

I have a confession: Kurt Vonnegut has been a dead key to me ever since I started to read both for pleasure and spiritual succor. I’d pick up a Vonnegut novel or story, start to read armed with the conviction that I was about so find something I had been missing. Then I would get distracted....