I’ve often wished that the general public could see what goes on behind closed doors in the criminal courts. All that is generally reported is the damning accusations against a defendant. The press accepts the state’s claims as the controlling narrative. The fight to make sure a client is truly presumed innocent is usually lost in the press before the first gavel falls in a courtroom.
So let me show you the machinery of justice as it whirred in the backroom of one Connecticut courthouse. I will not use names, nor will I reveal privileged information. I will relay the story...
January 3, 2012
I expect the trial of the year will be United States of America v. Julian Assange. Of course, Assange has not yet been charged. He is not even in the country. But the United States will find a way to bring him here, a sort of reverse rendition that will place the Australian hacker within the jurisdiction of the United States.
Assange will be tried under the Espionage Act, legislation passed in 1917 making it a crime to take information from the government and use it to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of our...
January 2, 2012
President James Garfield did not have to die. It appears as if the medical care he received killed him. Even so, Charles Julius Guiteau fired the shots that led to his death on July 2, 1881. Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of the President, is a skillful account of Garfield’s shooting, his lingering death and the cloud of unknowing that blinded the physicians who treated him. Millard brings the sensibility of a novelist to historical narrative. I knew far less about the Garfield assassination than I realized as I read this...
January 1, 2012
I will count 2011 a good year, despite the dire economy. It was a year of focusing, getting lean, re-examining priorities. As 2011 ends, I am uncharacteristically optimistic. Despite a world of trouble, the sum of it all seems to represent a gathering storm. There’s a certain energy in the air. Where will lightning strike?
My clients and I had a generally good year in the law’s trenches. I was reminded of that by year-end visits, calls and holiday cards. Two brothers walked away from a charge of murder, and I had the thrill of driving them home, still dressed in their...
December 31, 2011
December 27, 2011
Asking five law school professors to debate how best to educate lawyers is like asking a bartender which alcohol best promotes abstinence: So long as...
December 23, 2011
I think I might have joined the American Bar Association many years ago, when I had no idea what lawyering involved. But the desire to belong soon...
December 22, 2011
I feel bad for Chris Hoffman. I really do. He is in the untenable position of serving as spokesman for a privatized public school. The New Haven...
December 20, 2011
I take it as a given that Bradley Manning was one of the sources of the classified material Wikileaks published about our war efforts in Afghanistan...
December 19, 2011
I’ve never been to Maricopa County, and from what I read, I wouldn’t travel there for pleasure. The county, home of Phoenix and...
December 18, 2011
Newt Gingrich promises that if elected president he will ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court, or, presumably, those of any other court, if he...