Norm Pattis
Norm Pattis is a criminal defense attorney and civil rights lawyer in Bethany. Most days he blogs at www.pattisblog.com.
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More Evidence Of Courtroom Tilted Toward State
Monday, March 28, 2011 | by Norm Pattis | The Connecticut Law Tribune
In my next life, I want to be a prosecutor. I want to live in a fantasyland without consequences. I want to make mistakes, and never be held accountable for them. I want to stand tall for justice, and then do whatever I think is right. I want the right to demand that others be held accountable, without ever being accountable myself.
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Death Is PassÉ: The Banality of Goodness
Monday, March 21, 2011 | by Norm Pattis | The Connecticut Law Tribune
I was in New Haven just as day broke. Much to my surprise, there were few media wagons in front of the courthouse on Church Street. Only one ghastly looking antenna reached into the gray morning sky. All at once it struck me: death is now passÉ.
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Time To Give Juries Power To Nullify
Monday, February 7, 2011 | by Norm Pattis | The Connecticut Law Tribune
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 and a fresh perspective to conflict.
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Powerful Voices Stand In Way Of Reform
Monday, January 31, 2011 | by Norm Pattis | The Connecticut Law Tribune
Gov. 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 needs to take a leadership role. Who better than a new governor?
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Courts Routinely Bless Police Hypocrisy
Monday, January 24, 2011 | by Norm Pattis | The Connecticut Law Tribune
I saw another of the law's dismal and predictable set pieces last week. As always, a trial court blessed the mess and called it justice. When will the courts begin to hold police officers to the same standards to which other witnesses are held? A client was arrested and charged with possession of narcotics with the intent to sell.
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Shameful Prosecution For An Act of Kindness
Monday, January 17, 2011 | by Norm Pattis | The Connecticut Law Tribune
It seems paradoxical to suggest that we need to fight for the right to die. We owe nature a death. Most of us spend the better part of our lives trying to avoid the inevitable; we want to extend this business of living for as long as possible. We do all this without ever pausing to think we need to petition the state for the right to carry on.
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Shameful Prosecution For An Act of Kindness
Monday, January 17, 2011 | by Norm Pattis | The Connecticut Law Tribune
It seems paradoxical to suggest that we need to fight for the right to die. We owe nature a death. Most of us spend the better part of our lives trying to avoid the inevitable; we want to extend this business of living for as long as possible. We do all this without ever pausing to think we need to petition the state for the right to carry on.
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Man Of Year Creates Brave New World
Monday, December 27, 2010 | by Norm Pattis | The Connecticut Law Tribune
You know times are changing when a 26-year-old kid is voted Man of the Year by Time magazine. But there he is: Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, the wunderkind who created Facebook and became a billionaire in the process. I am awestruck, and not in a way that makes me any happier.
