Let me see if I get this right: We take an eighteen-year-old kid, break down his inhibitions against killing another person, train him to kill, place him in harm’s way and require him to kill or be killed, and then expect what? That he will blow the smoke from his smoking barrel, walk away from the battlefield with a smile on his face, and not suffer aftershocks? Warriors will suffer road rage. I suspect it goes with the turf.
The furor over the Internet film of several Marines urinating on the corpses of three Taliban fighters they had just killed in battle is...
January 13, 2012
It should surprise no one that the lone vote casting doubt on the reliability of eyewitness testimony came from the only United States Supreme Court justice with experience actually trying cases. Most justices think facts are something you read about in a textbook, or in a legal brief. Only Sonia Sotomayor has actually looked a jury in the eye and asked them for something. She alone wants the nation’s trial courts to take special pains to make sure eyewitness testimony is more than mere finger pointing.
The 8-1 vote in Perry v. New Hampshire rejected the claim that...
January 12, 2012
I have an assignment for an aspiring historian: Locate the moment in American history when ordinary people began to fear one another more than they feared the potential of government to abuse its power. I am sure the moment exists. I see signs of it everywhere. Consider the case of how a national identification card reflects this redirection of our fears.
We are living in the world George Orwell wrote about, a place in which Big Brother not just watches, but controls the ability of ordinary people to take care of themselves. Requiring a national identification card, or requiring that...
January 10, 2012
When I watch Orly Tatiz and Georgia State Representative Mark Hatfield, a Republican, explain why they think President Barack Obama’s name should be struck from the Georgia primary ballot I am at once inspired with a wish that the South had won the Civil War: The species of idiocy espoused by these two inspires such revulsion that I wish they lived in another country. But we are joined at the Constitutional hip. So I call these two birthers fellow citizens, and I marvel that anyone in their right mind could waste their time on the nonsense they espouse.
The two will be on...
January 8, 2012
January 7, 2012
Murder-for-hire preoccupied me at week’s end. It’s not that I was in the market for a killer, mind you. But I’ve defended people...
January 5, 2012
The course I recall best from law school was Carol Weisbrod’s family law class at the University of Connecticut. At the time, I did not...
January 3, 2012
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...
January 2, 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...
January 1, 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...
December 31, 2011
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...