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Public Defense

A Public Defender

Criminal law news from Connecticut and around the country.
By Gideon

Post Frequency: 10.1/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 12:17:35

Stop! In the name of the law!

Posted on August 03, 2010
I am J. Clarence Gideon. That’s Special Agent Gideon to you. Because you’re so stupid, according to the FBI, that you can’t tell that what I’m displaying is a blog post and not a damn FBI badge. It’s not like psychic paper, you know...

Gun-waving cop has right to privacy

Posted on August 02, 2010
is that a gun in your hand or are you just happy to see me? This incident occurred back in April, but is back in the news with an ACLU press release. The ACLU is representing Anthony Graber…well, you know what? Just watch: That’s Graber, on the motorbike, and that’s Joseph David Uhler, gun-waving, taking-too-long-to-identify-himself,

Legal fictions: a one-way street

Posted on August 02, 2010
The deck is stacked, the house always wins, etc., etc., etc. Phrases routinely used to indicate that the playing field is not level and is biased for one side against the other. I’ll give you another: consciousness of guilt. A legal fiction of the worst kind, to be sure...

One man?s regret is another man?s disparity

Posted on August 02, 2010
Statistics at most may show only a likelihood that a particular factor entered into some decisions. There is, of course, some risk of racial prejudice influencing a jury’s decision in a criminal case. There are similar risks that other kinds of prejudice will influence other criminal trials...

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The ideal ideal

Posted on July 27, 2010
A few weeks ago, I had something akin to a job interview. There I sat, on one side of a metal table, in my favorite suit. He sat on the other. The questions came fast and furious: “How many cases have you tried?” I wasn’t expecting that, so I took my time...

Where were you on April 17, 1966?

Posted on July 22, 2010
Ask anyone that question and they’ll look at you like you’re crazy (and you might get some interesting responses from those that weren’t born yet). But try it. If you were alive then, think back. Think back to that April day or any other April day that year or the next year or in fact,

The freakin? FCC: obscenely indecent

Posted on July 15, 2010
Two days ago, the Second Circuit on remand from the Supreme Court, struck down the FCC’s policy on “fleeting expletives” (don’t you love how bureaucrats can make anything sound clinical and boring?) as being unconstitutionally vague...

Deterrent? Not Actually

Posted on July 14, 2010
all your DNA are belong to us The story of the role of DNA in the criminal justice system is quite interesting. Heralded as the ultimate in crime solving, DNA has slowly infiltrated the collective consciousness of the entire nation and infected our lawyers, judges and jurors...

Indigent defense on trial

Posted on July 12, 2010
The stereotype of the over-worked, under-paid public defender exists for a reason. Even though I’ve personally fought against the stereotype here on the blog and in real life, I must necessarily admit that in a lot of States, the caricature is not a caricature at all, but an accurate representation of the state of indigent

Sometimes a fool is just a fool

Posted on July 12, 2010
A client who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer. And fools are, by their very description, entitled to make foolish decisions. As those in the legal profession know well, just because a client makes a foolish decision, it doesn’t mean that he’s incompetent...

Innocence on a clock

Posted on July 07, 2010
When I first turned my eye toward law school and the criminal justice system, the echoing refrain was that we, in this country, were the best. The criminal justice system, the jury system, the resources, the level of intelligence on both sides of the aisle on the bench all combined to create the best that

Happy Independunce Day

Posted on July 05, 2010
From the “you have the right to be stupid” clause of the Constitution: A Fairfield man was arrested Thursday morning after buying a high powered rifle to stop an alien invasion, police said. Fairfield Police Sgt. James Perez said Dane Eisenman, 57, responded to a classified advertisement for a ...

All that?s left to do is mitigate

Posted on July 02, 2010
In its pure, unadulterated, un-judicially-activated form, the law – criminal and constitutional – is a beautiful thing. Reflecting on the context in which the Constitution was written, and the way in which its application was envisioned is a source of inspiration...

Conviction: the movie

Posted on July 02, 2010
Someone turned me on to the trailer for this upcoming movie: Conviction. Based on the true life story of Betty Anne Waters‘ 17 year fight to exonerate her brother, the movie stars Hillary Swank as Waters and Minnie Driver as her best friend Abra Rice...

Life without possibility of redemption

Posted on June 17, 2010
I sat in a prison cell yesterday. And not your regular bullpen where they cram in 4 people who’re waiting to go to court. The real deal. Where our clients sleep at night (and often during the day). That of the 60 square foot variety. There was a bed – a small bed – that

Revamped ? again

Posted on June 14, 2010
As you can see, the layout and design has been revamped. It’s still a little buggy, so bear with me as I try to figure it out. As always, if I can’t, I’ll just go back to the old design. Kthxbai.

Change blindness and the fallacy of the all-remembering cop

Posted on June 13, 2010
Change blindness is a visual perception phenomenon in which the human mind fails to detect pretty significant changes in our surroundings and distorts our memory. The most recent famous example of change blindness and its relative, inattentional blindness, is the “count the passes” experiment, which I’m sure everyone’s heard of by now (read the NYT review

Racial ridicule in Connecticut

Posted on June 08, 2010
is apparently a crime. C.G.S 53-37 provides: Any person who, by his advertisement, ridicules or holds up to contempt any person or class of persons, on account of the creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race of such person or class of persons, shall be fined not more than fifty dollars or imprisoned not more than [...

Rell vetoes sentencing commission

Posted on June 08, 2010
Rell, intent on breaking the world record for vetoes and dumbass moves as Governor before she leaves office this year (can that day come soon enough? I say no), vetoed yet another important criminal justice bill yesterday. The bill, which would have created a sentencing commission to evaluate the state’s statutes and sentencing practices and [...

That bus is not for your client

Posted on June 08, 2010
The internet has changed everything. Every fool with no money has a blog, every newspaper website caters to the lowest common denominator and every twit can Tweet for free. A percentage of these are former and current clients, both gruntled and dis. Back in the old days, when you walked 20 miles to work, uphill, in [...

The blind leading the blind?

Posted on June 07, 2010
We are counselors, which is a term that is broader than attorney or lawyer. Counseling implies so much more than merely representing someone in court in a criminal or civil matter. It is our job to counsel, to advise. We are not cheerleaders and we are not enablers...

You?re not a criminal defense lawyer if

Posted on June 04, 2010
you haven’t fantasized about doing this (for those who don’t want to click on the link just yet: a pd choked a prosecutor as a result of a case-related dispute). I know I have. And, just as in the story, it’s always been motivated by the law, not any personal animus...

If you?re not ready, neither is your client

Posted on June 03, 2010
War stories are a great way of passing time. It’s a slow day in the office and you end up in a long conversation with a colleague who’s been there and seen that. While mostly entertaining, the stories are also useful for one other thing: they’re a training tool...

Paying for injustice

Posted on May 18, 2010
Meet Manuel Hidalgo Rodriguez, arrested and convicted in 1995 for child sexual assault that he did not commit. Hidalgo spent 5 years out of a 5 1/2 year sentence before his conviction was reversed and the charges dismissed. Meet Thomas White, also convicted for child sexual assault and who also spent 5 years in prison before [...

Expanding Graham

Posted on May 17, 2010
In the other criminal justice opinion issued by SCOTUS today, a 6-3 court held in Graham v. Florida that life without parole for juveniles convicted of non-homicide crimes violates the Constitution’s ban on Cruel and Unusual Punishments.� The decision is a beautiful thing, for sure...

Taking stock of Comstock

Posted on May 17, 2010
[I can't believe no one's made the pun yet] What Comstock is, what it isn’t and what it might very well be. First, what Comstock isn’t. Despite the ominous newspaper headlines, it is my opinion – however uninformed – that Comstock does not directly stand for the proposition that it is Constitutionally permissible to indefinitely commit sex [...

Twice in jeopardy, 40 years apart

Posted on May 17, 2010
Back in 2007, when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania announced its intent to prosecute William Barnes for the death of officer Walter Barclay, eyebrows were raised. Barnes, you see, had already been tried for the 1966 shooting of Barclay and had been found guilty of attempted murder...

Padilla on sex offender registration, indirectly

Posted on May 13, 2010
Back when Padilla v. Kentucky was decided by the United States Supreme Court, the defense bar was quite excited not only by the relief it afforded criminal defendants, but also by the exciting possibility that the Court might be willing to take an honest look at the fictional distinction between direct and collateral consequences of [...

Tonya Craft teaches us all

Posted on May 11, 2010
Tonya Craft, a former kindergarten teacher, charged with 22 counts of various sexual offenses involving 3 minor girls, was acquitted today. You may or may not have heard of her. I wrote a post recently about the trial and some of the outrageous antics engaged in by the prosecutors...

Gideon stirs

Posted on May 09, 2010
On Thursday, the New York Court of Appeals issued a 4-3 decision permitting, but narrowing, the NYCLU’s lawsuit [prior post] against 5 counties to proceed. The crux of the claim is not a violation of Strickland , but rather a violation of Gideon itself...

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