Blog Posts

One of the most terrifying cases I ever handled involved the state’s decision to seize a child upon birth and to place it in the care of strangers. The theory supporting this cradle-robbing was predictive neglect. Because the parents were suspected of having shaken another of their babies and...

"I am confused," a client told me a long, long time ago. "You are telling me I should take the deal, but you are also telling me you are prepared to fight the case." We were standing on the courthouse steps, preparing to begin jury selection in a high-stakes criminal case. "Which is it?," the...

My sense of things is that most jurors struggle to do the right thing. They work at the decisions we ask them to make. They try to follow the law. There are failures, to be sure. But in general, I trust a jury far more than I trust the weary eye of a judge. Lay jurors bring common sense...

My sense of things is that most jurors struggle to do the right thing. They work at the decisions we ask them to make. They try to follow the law. There are failures, to be sure. But in general, I trust a jury far more than I trust the weary eye of a judge. Lay jurors bring common sense...

I don't much like government, and pretend to love chaos. Watching news reports from Cairo forces me to admit hypocrisy. The fact is, I want chaos on my terms. The state of nature terrifies. As a general rule, I would prefer not being murdered, the victim of theft or otherwise terrorized by others....

I have a secret. I think Leo Tolstoy might be reincarnate and practicing law in California. I’m not sure how far I want to go with this hypothesis, but there are certain similarities between the Russian Count and a solitary soul out West. I would never have been able to spot the resemblance...

I read this morning's newspapers with more than the usual fascination. The sight of protestors on the streets of Egypt thrills me, even though I do not know what comes next. Reports of economic despair, a lack of social mobility and opportunity, and a regime out of touch with the demands of...

One of the legislative geniuses in the Virginia State Senate thinks he has found a sure-fired way to reduce the cost of dealing with violent sex offenders. Rather than spend scarce funds holding them in psychiatric hospitals, he proposes a simple and more elegant solution:...

Governor Dannel P. Malloy should be bold in proposing reform in the state’s courts. It is not that the judiciary is opposed in principle to change. But bench and bar are inherently conservative. They cherish the status quo, even if the current manner of doing business is wasteful. Someone...

I am in the business of offering hope, but there are hopeless situations, cases in which there is nothing that can be done. Accepting that is hard for me, but it is far harder on the man or woman viewing me as their last best hope. They abide in their sorrow, while I move on to another case. I...